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OUTLINES 



OF AN 



HISTORICAL VIEW 



Oi THE 



PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN MIND.- 



OUTLINES 



OF AN 



HISTORICAL VIEW 



OF THE 



PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN MIND: 



BEING A POSTHUMOUS WORK OF THE LATE 

M. -DE CONDORCET. 



TRANSLATED FROM fHE FRENCH: 



BAL TIMOREx 
Printed by G. Fryer, for J. Frank. 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Preface * 

[Introduction * • • * ^ 

FIRST EPOCH. 

QVIen united into hordes 

SECOND EPOCH. 

Pastoral state of mankind.. ..Transition 
c 

prom that to the agricultural 

STATE ...... 25 

THIRD EPOCH. 

(Progress of mankind from the agricultu- 
ral STATE TO THE INVENTION OF ALPHA- 
BETICAL WRITING . ... 32 

FOURTH EPOCH. 

Progress of the human mind in Greece, 
'til the division of the sciences, 
about the age of alexander 
FIFTH EPOCH. 

10GRESS OF THE SCIENCES FROM THEIR DIVI- 
SION TO THEIR DECLINE 66 

SIXTH EPOCH. 

OF LEARNING, TO ITS RESTORATION ^ 
ABOUT THE PERIOD OF THE CRUSADES 



iv. CONTENTS. 

Page, 
SEVENTH EPOCH. 

From the first progress or the. sciences 

ABOUT THE PERIOD OF THEIR REVIVAL IN 
THE WEST, TO THE INVENTION OF THE ART 
OF PRINTING. .... 107 

EIGHTH EPOCH. 

From the invention of printing to the pe- 
riod WHEN THE SCIENCES AND PHILOSO- 
PHY THREW OFF THE YOKE OF AUTHORITY 120 

NINTH EPOCH. 

From the time of descartes, to the for- 
mation OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC . 150 

TENTH EPOCH. 

Future progress of mankind . . 209 



PREFACE. 



vOONT)OFXET, proscribed by a sanguinary fac- 
tion, formed the idea of addressing to his fellow- 
citizens a summary of his principles, and of his con* 
duct in public affairs. He set down a few lines in 
execution of this project: but when he recollected, 
as he was obliged to do, thirty years of labor direct- 
lO the public service, and the multitude of fugi- 
tive pieces in which, since the revolution, he had 
ily attacked every institution inimical to li- 
berty, he rejected the idea of a useless justification. ' 
Free as he was from the dominion of the passions, 
he could not consent to stain the purity of his mind 
by recollecting his persecutors ; perpetually and 
alive to himself, he determined to 
die short space that remained between 
him and death to a work of general and permanent 
utility. That work is the performance now given 
to the world. It has relation to a number of others, 
in which the rights of men had previously been 
discussed and established ; in which superstition 
had i its last and fatal blow ; in which the 
methods of the mathematical sciences, applied to 
.' objects, have opened new avenues to the moral 
and political sciences ; in which the genuine prin- j 
>f social I received 
;t, and" a kind of demonstration, unknown be- 
fore ; lastly, in which we where p 
marks of that | fe 

>f self-love of 



vi. PREFACE 

and incorruptible virtues within the influence of 
which it is impossible to live without feeling a .reli- 
gious veneration. 

May this deplorable instance of the most ex- 
traordinary talents lost to his country... .to the cause 
of liberty.. ..to the progress of science, and its be- 
neficial application to the wants of civilized man, 
excite a bitterness of regret that shall prove advanr 
tageous to the public welfare !.,..May this death, 
which will In no small degree contribute, in the 
pages of history, to characterise the era in which 
it has taken place, inspire a firm and dauntless at- 
tachment to the rights of which it was a violation! 
Such is the only homage worthy the sage, who, the 
fatal sword suspended over his head, could medi- 
tate in peace the melioration and happiness of his 
fellow creatures ; such the only consolation those 
can experience who have been the objects of his 
affection, and haye known all the extent of his vir- 
tue. 



OUTLINES 

OF AM 

HISTORICAL VIEW, kci 
INTRODUCTION. 



lAN is born with the faculty of receiving 
Sensations. In those which he receives, he is ca- 
pable of perceiving and of distinguishing the sim- 
ple sensations of which they are composed. He 
can retain, recognise, combine them. He can pre- 
serve or recal them to his memory • he can com- 
pare their different combinations ; he can ascertain 
what they possess in common, and what character- 
ises each: lastly, he can affix signs to all these ob- 
jects, the better to know them, and the more easily 
to form from them new combinations. 

This faculty is developed in him by the action 
of external objects, that is, by the presence of cer- 
tain complex sensations, the constancy of which, 
whether in their identical whole, or in the laws of 
their change, is independent of himself. It is, also 
exercised by communication with other similarly 
organised individuals, and by all the artificial means 
which, from the first developement of this faculty, 
men have succeeded in inventing. 

Sensations are accompanied with pleasure or 
pain, and man has the further faculty of convening 
these momentary impressions into durable senti- 
lX|gnts of a corresponding nature, and of experience 

a 



8 

ing these sentiments either at the sight or recolleo 
tion of the pleasure or pain of beings sensitive like 
himself. And from this faculty, united with that 
of forming and combining ideas, arise between him 
and his iellow-creatures^ the ties of interest and 
duty, to which nature has affixed the most exqui- 
site portion of our felicity, and the most poignant of 
our sufferings. 

Were we to confine our observations to an en- 
quiry into the general facts and unvarying laws 
which the developement of these faculties presents 
to us, in what is common to the different individu- 
als of the human species, our enquiry would bear 
the name of metaphysics* 

But if we consider this developement in its re- 
sults, relative to the mass of individuals co-existing 
at the same time on a given space, and follow it 
from generation to generation, it then exhibits a 
picture of the progress of human intellect. This 
progress is subject to the same general laws, ob- 
servable in the individual developement of our fa- 
culties ; being the result of that very develope- 
ment considered at once in a great number of indi- 
viduals united in society. But the result which 
every instant presents, depends upon that of the 
preceding instants, and has an influence on the in- 
stants which follow. 

This picture, therefore, is historical; since 
subjected as it will be to perpetual variations, it is 
formed by the successive observation of human 
societies at the different eras through which they 
have passed. It will accordingly exhibit the order 
In which the changes have taken place, explain the 
influence of every past period upon that which fol- 
lows it, and thus show, by the modifications which 
the human species have experienced, in its incess- 
ant renovation through the immensity of ages, the 



course which it has pursued, and the steps which it 
has advanced towards knowledge and happiness. 
From these observations on what man has hereto- 
fore been, and what he is at present, we shall be led 
to the means of securing and of accelerating the 
still further progress, of which, from his nature, 
we may indulge the hope. , 

Such is the object of the work I have underta- 
ken ; the result of which will be to show, from rea* 
soning and from facts, that no bouads have been 
fixed to the improvement of the human faculties ; 
that the perfectibility of man is absolutely indefi- 
nite ; that the progress of this perfectibility, hence- 
forth above the cotroul of every power that would 
impede it, has no other limit than the duration of 
the globe upon which nature has placed us. The 
course of this progress may doubtless be more or 
less rapid, but it can never be retrograde ; at least 
while the earth retains its situation in the system of 
the universe, and the laws of this system shall nei- 
ther effect upon the glebe a general overthrow, nor 
introduce such changes as would no longer permit 
the human race to preserve and exercise therein 
the same faculties, and find the same resources. 

The first state of civilization observable in the 
human species, is that of a society of men, few in 

nber, subsisting by means of hunting and fish- 
ing, unacquainted with every arc but die imped 
one of fabricating in an uncouth manner their ai 
and some household utensils, and of constructs g 
or digging for themselves an habitation ; yet al- 
ready in possession of a language for the commu- 
nication of their wants, and a small Dumber 
moral ideas, from which are deduced their com- 
mon rules of conduct, living in families, conformi 
themselves to general customs that serve instead 
of laws, and having even a rude form of govt : 
ment. 



10 

Ik this state it is apparent that the uncertainty 
and difficulty of procuring subsistence, and the un- 
avoidable alternative of extreme fatigue or an ab- 
solute repose, leaye not to man the leisure in which, 
by resigning himself to meditation, he might en- 
rich his mind with new combinations. The means 
of satisfying his wants are even too dependent upon 
chance and the seasons,, useful to excite an indus- 
try, the progressive improvement of which might 
be transmitted to his progeny - r and accordingly the 
attention of each is confined to the improvement of 
his individual skill and address. 

For this reason, the progress of the human 
species must in this stage have been extremely 
slow ; it could make no advance but at distant in- 
tervals, and when favored by extraordinary circum- 
stances. Meanwhile, to the subsistance derived 
from hunting or fishing, or from the fruits which 
the earth spontaneously offered, succeeds the sus- 
tenance afforded by the animals which man has 
i tamed, and which he knows how to preserve and 
i multiply. To these means is afterwards added an 
: imperfect agriculture ; he is no longer content with 

< the fruit or plants which chance throws in his way ; 

< he learns to form a stock of them, to collect them 
i around him, to sow or to plant them, to favor their 
: reproduction by the labor of culture. 

Property, which, in the first state, was confin- 
« ed to his household untensils, his arms, his nets, 
i and the animals he killed, is now extended to his 
« flock, and next to the land which he has cleared and 
1 cultivated. Upon the death of its head, this pro- 
; perty naturally" devolves to the family. Some in- 
i dividuals possess a superfluity capable of being 
I prescved. If it be absolute, it gives rise to 
t new wants. If confined to a single article, white 
s the proprietor feels the want of other articles, this 



II 

want suggests the idea of exchange. Hence moral 
relations multiply, and become complicate* A 
greater security, a more certain and more conftant 
leisure, afford time for meditation, or at least for 
a continued series of observations. The custom 
is introduced, as to some individuals, of giving 
a part of their superfluity in exchange for labour, 
by which they might be exempt from labour them- 
selves. There accordingly exists a class of men 
whose time is not engrossed by corporeal exertions 
and whose desires extend beyond their simple 
wants. Industry awakes ; the arts already known, 
expand and improve : the facts which chance pre- 
sents to the observation of the most attentive and 
best cultivated minds, bring to light new arts ; as 
the means of living become less dangerous and 
less precarious, population increases ; agriculture, 
which can provide for a greater number of indivi- 
duals upon the same space of ground, supplies the 
place of the other sources of subsistence; it fa- 
vours the multiplication of the species, by which 
it is favoured in its turn in a society become more 
sedentary, more connected, more intimate, ideas 
that have been acquired communicate themselves 
more quickly, and are perpetuated with more cer- 
tainty. And now the dawn of the sciences begins 
to appear ; man exhibits an appearance distinct 
from the other classes of animals, and is no longer 
like them, confined to an improvement purely in- 
dividual. 

The more extensile, more numerous and more 
complicated relations which men now form with 
each other, cause them to feel the necessitv of hav- 
ing a mode of communicating their ideas to the 
absent, of preserving the remembrance of a fact 
with more precision than by oral tradition, of fix- 
ing the conditions of an agreement more securely 

B3 



than by the memory of witnesses, of stating, iiB 
a way less liable to change, those respected cus- 
toms to which the members of any society agree to 
submit their conduct- 
Accordingly the want of writing is felt, and 
the art invented. It appears at first to have been 
absolute painting, to which succeeded a conventi- 
onal painting, preserving such traits only as were 
characteristic of the objects. Afterwards, by a 
kind of metaphor analogous to that which was al- 
ready introduced into their language, the image of 
a physical object became expressive of moral ideas. 
The origin of those signs, like the origin of words,, 
were liable in time to be forgotten ; and writing be- 
came the art of affixing signs of convention to eve- 
ry idea, every word, and of consequence to every 
combination of ideas and words.. 

ThePvE was now a language that was written, ■, 
and a language that was spoken, which it was neces-* 
sary equally to learn, between which there must b§ 
established a reciprocal correspondence. 

Some men of genius, the eternal benefactors of 
the human race, but whose names, and even coun- 
try are for ever buried in oblivion, observed that 
all the words of a language were only the combina* 
tions of a very limited number of primative articu- 
lations j but that this number, small as it was, was 
Sufficient to form a quantity almost infinite of dif- 
ferent combinations* i^ence they conceived the 
idea of representing by $sible signs, not the ideas 
or the words that answer^ to them, but those 
simple element of which the^words are composed. 
Alphabetical writing was then introduced* 
A small number of signs served to express every 
thing in this mode, as a small number of sounds 
sufficed to express every thing orally. The lan- 
guage written and the language spoken were the 



$am£ ; all that was necessary was to be able to 
know, and to form, the few given signs ; and ;.' 
last step secured for ever the progress of the human 
race. 

It would perhaps be desirable at the 
day, to institute a written language, which, devot- 
ed to the sole use of the sciences, expressing only 
such combinations of simple ideas as are found to 
be exactly the same in every mind, employed only 
upon reasonings of logical strictness, upon opera- 
tions of the mind precise and determinate, might 
be understood by men of every country, and be 
translated Into all their idioms, without being, like 
those idioms, liable to corruption, by passing into 
common use. 

Then, singular as it may appear, this kind of 
writing, the preservation of which would only have 
served to prolong ignorance, would become, in the 
hands of philosophy, an useful Instrument for the 
speedy propagation of knowledge, and advance- 
ment of the sciences. 

It is between this degree of civilization and that 
in which we still find the savage tribes, that we 
must place every people whose history has been 
handed down to us, and who, sometimes making 
new advancements, sometimes plunging them- 
selves again into ignorance, sometimes floating be- 
tween the two alternatives or stopping at a certain 
limit, sometimes totally disappearing from the 
earth under the sword of conquerors, mixing with 
those conquerors, or living in slavery : lastly, 
sometimes receiving knowledge from a more en- 
lightened people, to transmit it to other nations,.... 
form an unbroken chain of connections between 
the earliest periods of history and the age in which 
we live, between the first people known to us, and 
the present nations of Europe. 



i 4 



In the picture then which I mean to sketch 
three distinct parts are perceptible. 

In the first, in which the relations of travellers 
exhibit to us the conditions of mankind in the least 
civilized nations, we are obliged to guess by what 
steps man in an isolated state, or rather confined 
to the society necessary for the propagation of the 
species, was able to acquire those first degrees of 
improvement, the last term of which Is the use of 
an articulate language ; an acquisition that presents 
the most striking feature, and indeed the only one, 
a few more extensive moral ideas and a slight 
commencement of social order excepted, which 
distinguishes him from animals living like himself 
in regular and permanent society. In this part of 
our picture, then, we can have no other guide than 
an investigation of the dev elopement of our fa- 
culties. 

To this first guide, in order to follow man to 
the point in which he exercises arts, in which the 
rays of science begin to enlighten him, in which 
nations are united by commercial intercourse ; in 
which, in fine, alphabetical writing is invented, we 
may add the history of the several societies that 
have been observed in almost every interme- 
diate state : though we can follow no individual one 
through all the space which separates these two 
grand epochs of the human mind. 

Here the picture begins to take its coloring in 
great measure from the series of facts transmitted 
to us by history : but it is necessary to select these 
facts from that of different nations, and at the same 
time compare and combine them, to form the sup- 
posed histoiy of a single people, and delineate its 
progress. 

From the period that alphabetical writing was- 
known in Greece, hiftory is connected by an unin- 



h, 



*5 

terrupted series of facts and observations with the 

period in which we live, with the present stale of 
mankind in the mod enlightened countries of Eu- 
rope ; and the picture of the progress and advance- 
ment of the human mind becomes ftrictly hiftori- 
cal. Philosophy has no longer any thing to guess, 
has no more suppositious combinations to form ; 
all it has to do is to collect and arrange facts, and 
exhibit the useful truths which arise from them as 
a whole, and from the different bearings of their 
several parts. 

There remains only a third picture to form,.... 
that of our hopes, or the progress reserved for fu- 
ture generations, which the constancy of the laws 
ef nature seems to secure to mankind. And here 
it will be necessary to shew by what steps this pro- 
gress, which at present may appear chimerical, is 
gradually to be rendered possible, and even easy, 
how truth, in spite of the transient success of pre- 
judices, and the support they receive from the cor- 
ruption of governments or of the people, muse in 
the end obtain a durable triumph j by what ties na- 
ture has indissolubly united the advancement of 
knowledge with the progress of liberty, virtue, and 
respect ibr the natural rights of man ; how th 
blessings, the only real ones, though so freque 
seen apart as to be thought incompatible, mu 
cessarily amalgamate and become insepera! 
moment knowledge shall have arrived at a certain 
pitch in a great number of nations at once, the mo- 
ment it shall have penetrated the whole mass oT a 
great people, whose language shall haye beer 
universal, and whose commercial intercour 
embrace the whole extent of the globe. '1 
union having once taken place in the whole 
lightened class of men, this class will be consi 
eel as the friends of human kind, exerting 



i6 

selves in concert to advance the improvement and 
happiness of the species. 

We shall expose the origin and trace the history 
of general errors, which have more or less contri- 
buted to retard or suspend the advance of reason, 
and sometimes even, as much as political events, 
have been the cause of man's taking a retro* 
gade course towards ignorance, 

Those operations of the mind that lead to or 
retain us in error, from the subtle paralogism, by 
which the most penetrating mind may be deceived, 
to the mad reveries of enthusiasts, belong equally, 
with that just mode of reasoning that conducts us 
to truth, to the theory of the dev elopement of our 
individual faculties ; and for the same reason, the 
manner in which general errors are introduced, 
propogated, transmitted, and rendered permanent 
among nations, forms a part of the picture of the 
progress of the human mind. Like truths which 
improve and enligthen it, they are the consequence, 
of its activity, and of the disproportion that al- 
ways exists between what it actually knows, what 
it has the desire to know, and what it conceives 
there is a necessity of acquiring. 

It is even apparent, that, from the general laws 
of the developement of our faculties, certain pre- 
judices must necessarily spring up in each stage of 
our progress, and extend their seductive influence 
beyond that stage ; because men retain the errors 
of their infancy, their country, and the age in which 
they live, long after the truths necessary to the re* 
mo val of those errors are acknowledged. 

In short, there exist, at all times and in all 
countries, different prejudices, according to the de- 
gree of illumination of the different classes of men, 
and according to their professions. If the preju- 
dices of philosophers be impediments to new ac-- 



quisitions of truth, those of the less enlightened 
classes retard the propagation of truths already 
known, and those of esteemed and powerful pro- 
fessions oppose like obstacles. These are the three 
kinds of enemies which reason is continually obli- 
ged to encounter, and over which she frequently 
does not triumph till after. a long and painful ftrug- 
gle. The hiftory of these contests, together with 
that of the rise, triumph, and fall of prejudice, 
will occupy a considerable place in this work, and 
will by no means ibrm the ltaft important or leaft 
useful part of it. 

If there be really such an art as that of foresee- 
ing the future improvement of the human race, and 
of directing and hastening that improvement, the 
history of the progress it has already made must 
form the principal basis of this art. Philosophy, 
no doubt, ought to proscribe the superftitious idea, 
ivhich supposes no rules of conduct are to be found 
but in the hiftory of part ages, and no truths but 
in the ftudy of the opinions of antiquity. But 
ought it not to include in the proscription, the pre- 
judice that would proudly reject the lessons of ex- 
perience ? Certainly it is meditation alone that can, 
by happy combinations, conduct us to the general 
principles of the science of man. But if the study 
of individuals of the human species be of use to 
the metaphysician and moralist, why should that 
of societies be less useful to them ? And why not 
of use to the political philosopher ? If it be advan- 
tageous to observe the societies that exist at one 
and the same period, and to trace their connection 
and resemblance, why not to observe them in a suc- 
cession of periods ? Even supposing that such ob- 
servation might be neglected in the investigation 
of speculative truths, ought it to be neglected 
when the question is to apply those truths to prac- 



IS 

tke, and to deduce from science the art that should 
be the useful result? Do not our prejudices, and 
the evils that are the consequence of them, derive 
their source from the prejudices of our ancestors ? 
And will it not be the surest way of undeceiving 
us respecting the one, and of preventing the other, 
to develope their origin and effects ? 

Are we not arrived at the point when there it 
no longer any thing to fear, either from new errors, 
or the return of old ones ; when no corrupt institu- 
tion ean be introduced by hypocrisy, and adopted 
by ignorance or enthusiasm ; when no vicious 
combination can effect the infelicity of a great peo- 
ple ? Accordingly would it not be of advantage to 
know how nations have been deceived, corrupted, 
and plunged in misery S 

Every thing tells us that we are approaching 
the era of one of the grand revolutions of the hu- 
man race. What can better enlighten us to what 
we may expect, what can be a surer guide to us, 
amidst its commotions, than the picture of the re- 
volutions that have preceded and prepared the 
way for it ? The present state of knowledge as- 
sures us that it will be happy. But is it not upon 
condition that we know how to assist it with all our 
strength P And, that the happiness it promises 
may be less dearly bought, that it may spread 
with more rapidity over a greater space, that it 
may be more complete in its effects, is it not re- 
quisite to study, in the history of the human mind, 
what obstacles remain to be feared, and by whafc 
means those obstacles are to be surmounted ? 

I shall divide the space through which I mean 
to run, into nine grand epochs ; and shall presume 
in a tenth, to advance some conjectures upon th# 
iutuxe destiny of mankind. 



*9 

I shall confine myself to the principal features 
that characterize each ; I shall give them in the 
group, without troubling myself with exceptions 
or detail. I shall indicate the objects, of the re- 
sults of which the work itself wili present the do 
Telopements and the proofs. 



2© 



FIRST EPOCH, 



MEN UNITED INTO HORDES. 



E have no direct information by which t© 
ascertain what has preceeded the state of which 
we are now to speak ; and it is only by examining 
the intellectual or moral faculties, and the physi- 
cal constitution of man, that we are enabled to 
conjecture by what means he arrived at this first 
degree of civilization. 

Accordingly an investigation of those physi- 
cal qualities favourable to the first formation of 
society, together with a summary analysis of the 
developement of our intellectual or moral facul- 
ties, must serve as an introduction to this epoch, 

A society consisting of a family appears to be 
natural to man. Formed at first by the want which 
children have of their parents, and by the affection 
of the mother, as well as that of the father, though 
less general and less lively, time was allowed, by 
the long continuance of this want, for the birth 
and growth of a sentiment which must have exci- 
ted the desire of perpetuating the union. The 
continuance of the want was also sufficient for the 
advantages of the union to be felt. A family pla- 
ced upon a soil that afforded an easy subsistence, 
might afterwards have multiplied and become 
horde. 

Hordes that may have owed their origin to th 
union of several distinct families, must have bee: 
formed more slowly and more rarely, the u&ion 



"9 

i 



11 

depending on motives less urgent and the concur- 
rence of a greater number of circumstances. 

The art of fabricating arms, of preparing ali- 
ments, of procuring the utensils requisite for this 
preparation, of preserving these aliments as a pro- 
vision against the seasons in which it was impossi- 
ble to procure a fresh supply of them — these arts, 
confined to the most simple wants, were the first 
fruits of a continued union, and the first features 
that distinguished human society from the society 
observable in many species of beasts. 

In some of these hordes, the women cultivate 
round the huts, plants which serve for food and su- 
percede the necessity of hunting and fishing. In 
others, formed in places where the earth sponta- 
neously offers vegetable nutriment, a part of the 
time of the savage is occupied by the care of seek- 
ing and gathering it. In hordes of the last de- 
scription, where the advantage of remaining uni- 
ted is less felt, civilization has been observed very 
Jittle to exceed that of a society consisting of a 
single family. Meanwhile there has been found 
in all the use of an articulate language. 

More frequent and more durable connections 
with the same individuals, a similarity of interests, 
the succour mutually given, whether in their com- 
mon hunting or against an enemy, must have equal- 
ly produced both the sentiment of justice and a re- 
ciprocal affection between the members of the so- 
ciety. In a short time this affection would trans- 
form itself into attachment to the society . 

The necessary consequence was a violent en- 
mity, and a desire of vengeance not to be extin- 
guished, against the enemies of the horde. 

The want of a chief, in order to act in com- 
mon, and thereby defend themselves the bett 
and procure with greater case a more certain and 



22 

more abundant subsistence, Introduced the first 
idea of public authority into these societies. In 
circumstances in which the whole horde was inte- 
rested^respecting which a common resolution must 
be taken, all those concerned in executing the re- 
solution were to be consulted. The weakness of 
the females, which exempted them from the dis- 
tant chace and from war, the usual subjects of de- 
bate, excluded them alike from these consultations. 
As the resolutions demanded experience, none 
were admitted but such as were supposed to pos- 
sess it. The quarrels that arose in a society dis- 
turbed its harmony, and were .calculated to destroy 
it : it was natural to agree that the decision of 
them should be referred to those whose age and 
personal qualities inspired the greatest confidence. 
Such was the origin of the first political instituti- 
ons. 

The formation of a language must have pre- 
ceded these institutions. The idea of expressing 
objects by conventional signs appears to be above 
the degree of intelligence attained in this stage of 
civilization ; and it is probable they were only 
brought into use by length of time, by degrees, 
and in a manner in some sort imperceptible. 

The invention of the bow was the work of a 
single man of genius ; the formation of a lan- 
guage that of the whole society. These two kinds 
of progress belong equally to the human species. 
The one, more rapid, is the result of those new 
combinations which men favoured by nature are 
capable of forming ; is the fruit of their meditati- 
ons and the energies they display : the other, more 
slow, arises from the reflections and observations 
that offer themselves to all men, and from the ha- 
bits contracted in their common course of life. 



*3 

Regular movements adjusted to each other 
in due proportion, are capable of being executed 
with a less degree of fatigue ; and they who see, 
or hear them, perceive their order and relation 
with greater facility. For both these reasons they 
form a source of pleasure. Thus the origin of 
the dance, of music and of poetry, may be traced 
to the infant state of society. They were employ- 
ed for the amusement of youth and upon occasions 
of public festiyals* There were at that period love 
songs and war songs ; and even musical instruments 
were invented. Neither was the art of eloquence 
absolutely unknown in these hordes ; at least they 
could assume in their set speeches a more grave and 
solemn tone, and were not strangers to rhetorical 
exaggeration. 

The errors that distinguish this epoch of ci- 
vilization are the conversion of vengeance and 
cruelty towards an enemy into virtue ; the preju- 
dice that consigns the female part of society to a 
sort of slavery ; the right of commanding in war 
considered as the prerogative of an individual fa- 
mily ; together with the first dawn of various 
kinds of superstition. Of these it will be neces- 
sary to trace the origin and ascertain the motives. 
For man neyer adopts without reason any errors, 
except what his early education have in a manner 
rendered natural to him : if he embrace any new 
error, it is either because it is connected with those 
of his infancy, or because his opinions, passions, 
interests, or other circumstances, dispose him to 
embrace it. 

The only sciences known to savage hordes, are 
a slight and crude idea of astronomy, and the 
knowledge of certain medicinal plants employed in 
the cure of wounds and diseases ; and even tl; 
are already corrupted by a mixture of superstict 

B3 



24 

Meanwhile there is presented to us in this 
epoch one fact of importance in the history of the 
human mind. We can here perceive the begin- 
nings of an institution, that in its progress has been 
attended with opposite effects, accelerating the 
advancement of knowledge, at the same time that 
it disseminated error ; enriching the sciences with 
new truths, but precipitating the people into igno- 
rance and religious servitude, and obliging them 
to purchase a few transient benefits as the price of 
a long and shameful tyranny* 

I mean the formation of a class of men the de- 
positaries of the elements of the sciences or pro- 
cesses of the arts., of the mysteries or seremonies> 
of religion, of the practices of superstition, and 
frequently even of the secrets of legislation ancl 
polity. I mean that separation of the human race 
into two portions ; the one destined to teach, the 
other to believe ; the one proudly concealing what 
it vainly boasts of knowing, the other receiving 
with respect whatever its teachers condescend to 
reveal : the one wishing to raise itself above rea- 
son, the other humbly renouncing reason, and de- 
basing itself below humanity, by acknowledging 
in its fellow men prerogatives superior to their 
common nature. 

This distinction, of which, at the close of the 
eighteenth century, we still see the remains in our 
priests, is observable in the least civilized tribes 
of savages who have already their quacks and sor- 
cerers. It is too general, and too constantly meets 
the eye in all the stages of civilization, not to have 
a foundation in nature itself: and we shall accord- 
ingly find in the state of the human faculties at this 
early period of society, the cause of the credulity 
of the first dupes, and of the rude cunning of the 
first impostors. 



SECOND EPOCH. 

Pastoral State of Mankind Transition 

fpvom that to the agricultural state. 

JL H E idea of preserving certain animals taken in 
hunting, must readily have occurred, when their 
docility rendered the preservation of them a task of 
no difficulty, when the soil round the habitations of 
the hunters afforded these animals an ample sub- 
sistence, when the family possesses a greater quan- 
tity of them than it could for the present consume, 
and at the same time might have reason to appre- 
hend the being exposed to want, from the ill success 
of the next chace, or the intemperature of the sea- 
sons. 

From keeping these animals as a simple supply 
against a time of need, it was observed that they 
might be made to multiply, and thus furnish a more 
durable provision. Their milk afforded a farther 
resource : and those fruits of a flock, which, at 
first, were regarded only as a supplement to the 
produce of the chace, became the most certain., 
most abundant and least painful means of subsis- 
tence. Accordingly the chace ceased to be consi- 
dered as the principal of these resources, and soon 
as any resource at all ; it was pursued cnlv as a 
pleasure, or as a necessary precaution for keeping 
beasts of prey from the flocks, which, become 
more numerous, could no longer find round the 
habitations of their keepers a sufficient c 
rrient. 



26 

A more sedentary and less fatiguing life afford- 
ed leisure favorable to the developement of the 
mind. Secure of subsistence, no longer anxious 
respecting their first and indispensable wants, men 
sought, in the means of providing for those wants, 
new sensations. 

The arts made some progress : new light was 
acquired respecting that of maintaining domestic 
animals, of favoring their production, and even of 
improving their breed. 

Wool was used for apparel, and cloth substi- 
tuted in the place of skins. 

Family societies became more urbane, without 
being less intimate. As the flocks of each could 
not multiply in the same proportion, a difference of 
wealth was established. Then was suggested the 
idea of one man sharing the produce of his flocks 
with another who had no flocks, and who was to 
devote his time and strength to the care they re- 
quire. Then it was found that the labor of a young 
and able individual was of more value than the ex- 
pence of his bare subsistence ; and the custom was 
introduced of retaining prisoners of war as slaves,, 
instead of putting them to death. 

Hospitality, which is practised also among 
savages, assumes in the pastoral state a more de~ 
cided and important character, even among those 
wandering hordes that dwell in their waggons or in 
their tents. More frequent occasions occur for the 
reciprocal exercise of this act of humanity between 

man and man, between one people and another 

It becomes a social duty, and Is subjected to laws. 

As some families possessed not only a sure sub- 
sistence, but a constant superfluity, while others 
were destitute of the necessaries of life, natural 
compassion for the sufferings of the latter gave 
birth to the sentiment and practice of benificence* 



2 7 

Manners of course must have softened. The 
slavery of women became less severe, and the 
wives of the rich were no longer condemned to fa- 
tiguing labors. 

A great variety of articles employed in satisfy- 
ing the different wants, a great number of instru- 
ments to prepare these wants, and a greater ine- 
quality in their distribution, gave energy to ex- 
change, and converted it into actual commerce : it 
was impossible it should extend without the nee 
sity of a common measure and a species of money 
being felt. 

Hordes became mere numerous. At the same 
time, in order the more easily to maintain their 
flocks, they placed habitations, when fixed, m< 
apart from each other ; or changed them into move- 
able encampments, as soon as the}'- had discovered 
the use of certain species of animals they had ta 
ed, in drawing or carrying burthens. 

Each nation had its chief for the conduct of 
War ; but being divided into tribes, from the ne- 
cessity of securing pasturage, each tribe had a 
its chief. This superiority was attached almost 
universally to certain families. The heads ho 
ver of families in possession of numerous fl 
multitude of slaves, and who employ in the 
vice a great number of poor, partook of the 
ity of the chiefs of the tribe, as these also shared in 
that of the chiefs of the nation ; at least when, from 
the respect due to age, to experience, and the ex- 
ploits they had performed, they w r ere conceived to 
be worthy of it. And it is at this epoch of soci 
that we must place the origin of slavery, and i 
quality of political rights between men arrived 
the age of maturity. 

The consuls of the chiefs of the family or t 
decided, from ideas of natural justice or i 



blished usage, the numerous and intricate disputes 
that already prevailed. The tradition of these de- 
cisions, by confirming and perpetuating the usage, 
soon formed a kind of jurisprudence more regular 
and coherent than the progress of society had ren- 
dered in other respects necessary. The idea of 
property and its rights had acquired greater extent 
and precision. The division of inheritances be- 
coming more important, there was a necessity of 
subjecting it to fixed regulations. The agreements 
that were entered into being more frequent, were 
no longer confined to such simple objects ; they 
were to be subjected to forms ; and the manner of 
verifying them, to secure their execution, had also, 
its laws. 

The utility of observing the stars, the occupa- 
tion which in long evenings they afforded to the 
mind, and the leisure enjoyed by the shepherds, 
effected a slight degree of improvement in astro- 
nomy. 

But we observe advancing at the same time" 
the art of deceiving men In order to rob them, and 
of assuming over their opinions an authority found- 
ed upon the hopes and fears of the imagination 

More regular forms of worship begin to be estab- 
lished, and systems of faith less coarsely combined. 
The ideas entertained of supernatural powers, ac- 
quire a sort of refinement ; and with this refine- 
ment we see spring up in one place pontiff princes, 
in fc another sacerdotal families or tribes, in a third 
colleges of priests ; a class of individuals* uniformly 
affecting insolent prerogatives, separating them- 
selves from the people, the better to enslave them, 
and seizing exclusively upon medicine and astro- 
nomy, that they may possess every hold upon the 
mind for subjugating it, and leave no means b} 
which to unmask their hypocrisy, and break in pie 
C.es their chains. 



2 9 

Languages were enriched without becoming 
less figurative or less bold. The images employ* 
ed were more varied and more pleasing. They 
were acquired in pastoral life, as well as in the sa- 
vage life of the forests, from the regular phenome- 
na of nature, as well as from its wildness and ec- 
centricities. Songs, poetiy, and instruments of 
music were improved during a leisure that pro- 
duced an audience more peaceable, and at the same 
time more difficult to please, and allowed the artist 
to reflect on his own sentiments, examine his first 
ideas, and form a selection from them. 

It could not have escaped observation that 
■some plants yielded the flocks a better and more 

abundant subsistence than others The advantage 

was accordingly felt of favoring the production of 
these, of separating them from plants less nutritive, 
unwholesome, and even dangerous ; and the means 
of effecting this were discovered. 

In like manner, where plants, grain, the spon- 
taneous fruits of the earth, contributed with the 
produce of the flocks to the subsistence of man, it 
must equally have been observed how those vege- 
tables multiplied ; and the care must have followed 
of collecting them nearer to the habitations ; of 
separating them from uselses vegetables, that they 
might occupy a soil to themselves ; of securing 
them from untamed beasts, from the flocks, and 
even from the rapacity of other men. 

These ideas must have equally occurred, and 
even sooner, in more fertile countries, where the 
spontaneous productions of the earth almost suffic- 
ed of themselves for the support of men ; who now 
began to devote themselves to agriculture. 

In such a country, and under a happy climate, 
the same space of ground produces, in corn, roots, 
and fruit, wherewith to maintain a greater number 



3 o 

%i men than if employed as pasturage. Accord* 
mgly, when the nature of the soil rendered not such 
cultivation too laborious, when the discovery was 
made of employing therein those same animals 
used by pastoral tribes for the transport from place 
to place of themselves and their effects, agriculture 
became the most plentiful source of subsistence, the 
first occupation of men ; and the human race arriv- 
ed at the third epoch of its progress. 

The^e are people who have remained, from 
time immemorial, in one of the two states we have 
described. They have not only not risen of them- 
selves to any higher degree of improvement, but 
the connection and commercial intercourse they 
have had with nations more civilized have failed to 
produce this effect. Such connections and inter- 
course have communicated to them some know- 
ledge, some industry, and a great many vices, but 
have never been able to draw them from their state 
of mental ftagnation. 

The principal causes of this phenomenon are to 
be found in climate ; in habit ; in the sweets an- 
nexed to this state of almost complete independ- 
ence, an independence not to be equalled but in a 
society more perfect even than our own ; in the na- 
tural attachment of man to opinions received from 
his infancy, and to the customs of his country; in 
the aversion that ignorance feels to every sort of 
novelty ; in bodily and more especially mental in- 
dolence, which suppress the feeble and as yet 
scarcely existing spark of curiosity ; and lastly, in 
the empire which superstition already exercises 
over these infant societies. To these causes must 
be added the avarice, cruelty, corruption and pre- 
judices of polished nations, who appear to these 
people more powerful, more rich, more informed, 
more active, but at the same time more vicious^ 



o* 



particularly less happy than themselves. Tl 
must frequently indeed have been less struck with 
the superiority of such nations, than terrified at 
the multiplicity and extent of their wants, the tor- 
ments of their avarice, the never ceasing agitations 
of their ever active, ever insatiable passions. This 
description of people has by some philosophers be 
pitied, and by others admired and applauded ; these 
have considered as wisdom and virtue, what the 
former have called by the names of stupidity and 
sloth. 

The question in debate between them will be 
resolved in the course of this work. It will there 
be seen why the progress of the mind has not been 
at all times accompanied with an equal progress to- 
wards happiness and virtue ; and how the leaven 
of prejudices and errors has polluted the good that 
should flow from knowledge, a good which de- 
pends more upon the purity of that knowledge than 
its extent. Then it will be found that the stormy 
and arduous transition of a rude society to the state 
of civilization of an enlightened and free people, 
implies no degeneration of the human species, but 
is a necessary crisis in its gradual advance towards 
absolute perfection. | Then it will be found that It 
is not the increase of human knowledge, but its de- 
cline, that has produced the vices of polished nati- 
ons, and that, instead of corrupting, it has in all ca- 
ses softened, where it has been unable to correct or 
to change the manners of men. 



32 



THIRD EPOCH. 

Progress of Mankind from the Agricultu- 
ral State to the Invention of Alphabe- 
tical Writing. 



JL H E uniformity of the picture we have hi- 
therto drawn will soon disappear ; and we shall no 
longer have to delineate those indistinct features, 
those slight shades of difference, that distinguish 
the manners, characters, opinions and superstitions 
of men, rooted, as it were, to their soil, and perpe- 
tuating almost without mixture a single family. 

Invasions, conquests, the rise and overthrow 
of empires, will shortly be seen mixing and con- 
founding nations, sometimes dispersing them over 
anew territory, sometimes covering the same spot 
with different people. 

Fortuitous events will continually interpose, 
and derange the slow but regular movement of na- 
ture, often retarding, sometimes accelerating it* 

The appearances we observe in a nation in any 
particular age, have frequently their cause in a re- 
volution happening ten ages before it, and at a dis- 
tance of a thousand leagues ; and the night of time 
conceals a great portion of those events, the influ- 
ence of which we see operating upon the" men who 
have preceded us, and sometimes extending to 
ourselves. 






33 

But we have first to consider the effects of the 
change of which we are speaking, in a single peo- 
ple, and independently of the influence that con- 
quests and the intermixture of nations may have 
exercised. 

Agriculture attaches man to the soil which 
he cultivates. It is no longer his person, his fami- 
lv, his implements for hunting, that it would suf- 
fice him to transport ; it is no longer even his flocks 
which he might drive before him. The ground 
not belonging in common to all, he would find in 
his flight no subsistence, either for himself or the 
animals from which he derives his support. 

Each parcel of land has a master, to whom 
alone the fruits of it belong. The harvest exceed- 
ing the maintenance of the animals and men by 
whom it has been prepared, furnishes the proprie- 
tor with an annual wealth, that he has no necessity 
of purchasing with his personol labor. 

In the two former states of society, every indi- 
vidual, or every family at least, practised nearly- 
all the necessary arts. 

But when there were men, who, without la- 
bor, lived upon the produce of their land, and 
others who received wages ; when occupations 
were multiplied, and the processes of the arts be- 
come more extensive and complicate, common in- 
terest soon enforced a separation of them 

It was perceived, that the industry of an indivi- 

i, when confined to fewer objects, was more 
complete ; that the hand executed with greater 
readiness and precision a smaller number of opera- 
tions that long habit had rendered more familiar ; 
that akbs degree of understanding was required to 
perform a work well, when that work had be 
more frequently repeated. 



34 

Accordingly, while one portion of men de- 
voted themselves to the labors of husbandry, other? 
prepared the necessary instruments. The care of 
the flocks, domestie oeconomy, and the making of 
different articles of apparel, became in like mannt 
distinct employments. As, in families possessir 
but little property, one of these occupations wa 
insufficient of itself to engross the whole time of 
an individual, several were performed by the same 
person, for which he received the wages only of a 
single man. Soon the materials used in the arts in- 
creasing, and their nature demanding different 
modes of treatment, such as were analogous In this 
respect became distinct from the rest, and had a 
particular class of workmen. Commerce expand- 
ed, embraced a greater number of objects, and de- 
rived them from a greater extent of territory : and 
then was formed another class of men, whose sole 
occupation was the purchase of commodities for 
the purpose of preserving, transporting, or selling 
them again with profit. 

Thus to the three classes of men before dis- 
tinguishable in pastoral life, that of proprietors, 
that of the domestics of their family, and lastly, 
that of slavesi we must now add, that of the dif- 
ferent kinds of artisans, and that of merchants. 

Then it was, that, in a society . more fixed, 
more compact, and more intricate, the necessity 
wat felt of a more regular and more ample code of 
legislation ; of determining with greater precision 
the punishments for crimes, and the forms to be 
observed as to contracts ; of subjecting to severer 
rules the means of ascertaining and verifying the 
facts to which the law was to be applied. 

This progress, was the slow and gradual work 
of necessity and concurring circumstances : it is 
but a step or two farther in the route we have al- 
ready traced in pastoral nations* 



35 

In the first two epochs, education was purely 
domestic. The children were instructed by resid- 
ing with the father, in' the common labors that 
were followed, or the few arts that were known. 
From him they received the small number of tra- 
ditions that formed the history of the horde or of 
the family, the fables that had been transmitted, 
the knowledge of the national customs, together 
with the principles and prejudices that composed 
their pretty code of morality. Singing, dancing and 
military exercises they acquired in the society of 
their friends. 

In the epoch at which we are arrived, the chil- 
dren of the richer families received a sort of com- 
mon education, either in town, from conversation 
with the old and experienced, or in the house of a 
chief to whom they attached themselves. Here it 
was they were instructed in the laws, customs and 
prejudices of the country, and learned to chant 
poems descriptive of the events of its history. 

A more sedentary mode of life had introduced 
a greater equality between the sexes. The wives 
were no longer considered as simple objects of uti- 
lity, as only the more familiar slaves of their mas- 
ter. Man looked upon them as companions, and 
saw how conducive they might be made to his 
happiness* Meanwhile, even in countries where 
they were treated with most respect, where polyga- 
my was proscribed, neither reason nor justice ex- 
tended so far as to an entire reciprocity as to the 
right of divorce, and equal infliction of punishm 
in cases of infidelity. 

The history of this class of prejudices, and of 
their influence on the lot of the human species, 
must enter into the picture I ha \ I to 

draw; and nothing can better e 
man's happiness is connected with jress of 



3 6 

Some nations remained dispersed over the coun«- 
try. Others united themselves in towns, which be- 
came the residence of the common chief, called by 
a name answering to the word king, of the chiefs 
of tribes who partook his power, and of the elders 
of every great family. There the common affairs 
of the society were decided, as well as indivi- 
dual disputes. There the rich brought together 
the most valuable part of his wealth, that it might 
be secure from robbers, who must of course have 
multiplied with sedentary riches. When nations 
remained dispersed over a territory, custom deter* 
mined the time and place where the chiefs were 
to meet for deliberation upon the general interests 
of the community, and the adjudication of suits. 

Nations who acknowledged a common origin, 
who spoke the same language, without abjuring 
war with each other, entered almost universally in- 
to a confederacy more or less close, and agreed to 
unite themselves, either against foreign enemies, 
or mutually to avenge their wrongs, or to discharge 
in common some religious duty. 

Hospitality and commerce produced even 
some lasting ties between, nations different in ori- 
gin, customs and language ; ties that by robbery 
and war were often dissolved, but which necessity, 
stronger than the love of pillage or a thirst for ven- 
geance, afterwards renewed. 

To murder the vanquished, or to strip and re- 
duce them to slavery, was no longer the only ac- 
knowledged right between nations inimical to each 
other. Cessions of territory, ransoms, tribute, in 
part supplied the place of those barbarous outrages. 

At this epoch every man that possessed arms 
was a soldier. He who had the best, and best 
knew how to exercise them, who could furnish 
arms for others, upon condition that they followed 



37 

him to the wars, and from the provision he had a- 
massed was in a capacity to supply their wants, ne- 
cessarily became a chief. But this obedience, al- 
most voluntary, did not involve them in a servile 
dependence. 

As there was seldom occasion for new laws ; 
as there were no public expences to which the ci- 
tizens were obliged to contribute, and such as it 
became necessary to incur were defrayed out of 
the property of the chiefs, or the lands that were 
preserved in common ; as the idea of restricting 
industry and commerce by regulations was un- 
known ; as offensive war was decided by general 
consent, or undertaken by those only who were al- 
lured by the love of glory or desire of pillage ;.... 
man believed himself free in these rude govern- 
ments, notwithstanding the hereditary succession, 
almost universal, of their first chiefs or kings, and 
the prerogative, usurped by other subordinate 
chiefs, of sharing alone the political authority, and 
exercising the functions of government as well as 
of magistracy. 

But frequently a king surrendered himself to 
the impulse of personal vengeance, to the commis- 
sion of arbitrary acts of violence ; frequently, in 
these privileged families, pride, hereditary hatred, 
the fury of love and thirst for gold, engendered 
and multiplied crimes, while the chiefs assembled 
in towns, the instruments of the passions of kings, 
excited therein factions and civil wars, oppressed 
the people by iniquitous judgments, and tormented 
them by the enormities of their ambition and rapa- 
city. 

In many nations the excesses of these families 
exhausted the patience of the people, who accord- 
ingly extirpated, banished, or subjected them to 
the common law ; it was rarely that their title, with 



38 

a limited authority, was preserved to them ; and 
we see take place what has since been called by the 
name of republics. 

In other places, these kings, surrounded with 
minions, because they had arms and treasures to 
bestow on them, exercised an absolute authority : 
and such was the origin of tyranny. 

Elsewhere, particularly in countries where the 
small nations did not unite together in towns, the 
first forms of those crude institutions were preser- 
ved, till the period in which these people, either fell 
under the yoke of a conqueror, or, instigated by 
the spirit of robbery, spread themselves over a fo- 
reign territory. 

This tyranny, compressed within too narrow a 
space, could have but a short duration. The peo- 
ple soon threw off a yoke which force alone impo- 
sed, and opinion had been unable to maintain 

The monster was seen too nearly not to excite more 
horror than dread : and force as well as opinion 
could forge no durable chains, if tyrants did not ex- 
tend their empire to a distance sufficiently great to 
be able, by dividing the nation they oppressed, to 
conceal from it the secret of its own power and of 
their weakness. 

The history of republics belongs to the next e- 
poch : but that which we are considering will pre- 
sently exhibit a new spectacle* | 

An agricultural people, subjected to a foreign 
power, does not abandon its hearths: necessity ob- 
liges it to labour for its masters. 

Sometimes the ruling nation contents itself 
with leaving, upon the conquered territory, chiefs 
to govern, soldiers to defend it, and especially to 
keep in awe the inhabitants, and with exacting from 
the submissive and disarmed subjects a tribute in 
money or in pi~ovision. 



39 

Sometimes it seizes upon the territory itself, 
distributing the property of it to be the officers and 
soldiers : in that case it annexes to each estate the 
old occupiers that cultivated it, and subjects them 
to this new kind of slavery, which is regulated by 
laws more or less rigorous. Military service, and 
a tribute from the individuals of the conquered 
people, are the conditions upon which the enjoy- 
ment of these lands is granted to them. 

Sometimes the ruling nation reserves to itself 
the property of the territory, and distributes only 
the usufruct upon the same conditions as in the 
preceding instance. 

Commonly, however, all these modes of re- 
compensing the instruments of conquest, and of 
robbing the vanquished, are adopted at the same 
time. 

Hence we see new classes of men spring up ; 
the descendants of the conquering nation and those 
of the oppressed ; an heriditary nobility, not how- 
ever to be confounded with the patrician dignity of 
republics ; a people condemned to labor, to depen- 
dence, to a state of degredation, but not to slavery ; 
and lastly, slaves attached to the glebe, a class dif- 
fering from that of domestic slaves, whose servi- 
tude is less arbitrary, and who may appeal against 
the caprices of their masters to the law. 

It is here also we may observe the origin of the 
feodal system, a pest that has not been peculiar to 
our own climate, but has found a footing in almost 
every part of the globe, at the same periods of ci- 
vilization, and whenever a country has been occu- 
pied by two people between whom victory has 
tablished an hereditary inequality. 

In fine, despotism was also the fruit of con- 
quest. By despotism I here mean, in order to dis- 
tingush it from tyrannies of a transient duration, 



4-0 

the oppression of a people by a single man, who 
governs it by opinion, by habit, and above all, by 
a military force, over the individuals of which he 
exercises himself an arbitrary authority, but at the 
same time is obliged to respect their prejudices, 
flatter their caprices, and soothe their avidity and 
pride. 

Personally guarded bya numerous and select 
portion of this armed force, taken from the con- 
quering nation or consisting of foreigners ; imme- 
diately surrounded by the most powerful military 
chiefs ; holding the provinces in awe by means of 
generals who have the contra ul of inferior detach- 
ments of- this same armed body, the despot reigns 
by terror : nor is the possibility conceived, either 
by the depressed people, or any of those dispersed 
chiefs, rivals as they are to each other, of bringing 
against this man a force, which the armies he has 
at his command would not be able to crush at the 
instant. 

A mutiny of the guards, an insurrection in the 
capital, may be fatal to the despot, without crush- 
ing despotism. The general of an army, by de- 
stroying a family rendered sacred by prejudice, 
may establish a new dynasty, but it is only to ex- 
ercise a similar tyranny. 

In this third epoch, the people who have yet 
not experienced the misfortune, either of conquer- 
ing, or of being conquered, exhibit a picture of 
those simple but strong virtues of agricultural na- 
tions, those manners of heroic times, rendered so 
ting by a mixture of greatness and ferocity, 
of generosity and barbarism, that we are still so 
far seduced as to admire and even regret them. 

On the contrary, in empires founded by con- 
querors, we are presented with a picture containing 
*11 the gradations and shades of that abasement and 



41 

corruption, to which despotism and superstition 
can reduce the human species. There we sec 
spring up taxes upon industry and commerce, ex- 
actions obliging a man to purchase the right of em- 
ploying as he pleases his own faculties, laws re- 
stricting him in the choice of his labour and use of 
his property, other laws compelling the children to 
follow the profession of their parents, confiscations, 
cruel and atrocious punishments, in short, all those 
acts of arbitrary power, of legalized tyranny, of 
superstitious wickedness, that a contempt of hu- 
man nature has been able to invent. 

In hordes that have not undergone any consi- 
derable revolution, we may observe the progress of 

civilization stopping at no very elevated point 

Meanwhile men already felt the want of new ideas 
or sensations ; a want which is the first moving 
power in the progress of the human mind, equally 
awakening a taste for the superfluities of luxury, 
inciting industry and a spirit of curiosity, and 
piercing with an eager eye the veil with which na- 
ture has concealed her secrets. But it has happen- 
ed, almost universally, that, to escape this want, 
men have sought, and embraced with a kind of 
phrenzy, physical means of procuring sensations 
that may be continually renewed. Such is the 
practice of using fermented liquors, hot drinks, o- 
pium, tobacco, and betel. There are few nations 
among whom one or other of these practices is not 
observed, from which is derived a pleasure that oc- 
cupies whole days, or is repeated at every interval, 
that prevents the weight of time from being felt, 
satisfies the necessity of having the fact/ sed 

or employed, and at last blunting the edge of this 
necessity, thus prolongs the duv the inf 

cy and inactivity of the human mind. 1 ac- 

tices, which have proved an obsu, >ro- 



42 

■g-rcss of ignorant and enslaved nations, produce 
also their effects in wiser and more civilized coun- 
tries, preventing truth from diffusing through all 
classes of men a pure and equal light. 

By exposing what was the state of the arts in 
the first two periods of society, it w r ill be seen 
how to those of working wood, stone, or the bones 
of animals, of preparing skins, and weaving cloths, 
these infant people were able to add the more diffi- 
cult ones of dying, of making earthen ware, and 
even their first attempts upon metals. 

In isolated nations the progress of these arts 
must have been slow ; but the intercourse, slight as 
it was, which took place between them, served to 
hasten it. A new method of proceeding, a better 
contrivance, discovered by one people, became 
common to its neighbors. Conquest, which has so 
often destroyed the arts, began with extending, 
and contributed to the improving of them, before 
it stopped their progress, or was instrumental to 
their fall. 

We observe many of these arts carried to the 
highest degree of perfection in countries, where the 
long influence of superstition and despotism has 
completed the degradation of all the human faculties. 
But, if we scrutinise the wonderful production of 
this servile industry, we shall find nothing in them 
which announces the inspiration of genius ; all the 
improvements appear to be the slow and painful 
work of reiterated practice ; every where may be 
seen, amidst this labour which astonishes us, marks 
of ignorance and stupidity that disclose its origin. 

In sedentary and peaceable societies, astrono- 
my, medicine, the most simple notions of anato- 
my, the knowledge of plants and minerals, the first 
elements of the study of the phenomena of nature, 
acquired some improvement, or rather extended 



+3 

If they studied medicine and surgery, that part 
especially the object of which is the treatment of 
wounds, anatomy was neglected by them. 

Their knowledge in botany, and in natural his- 
tory, was confined to the articles used as remedies, 
and to some plants and minerals, the singular pro- 
perties of which might assist their projects. 

Their chymistry, reduced to the most simple 
processes, without theory, without method, with- 
out analysis, consisted in the making certain pre- 
parations, in the knowledge of a few secrets rela- 
tive to medicine or the arts, or in the acquisition 
of some nostrums calculated to dazzle an ignorant 
multitude, subjected to chiefs not less ignorant 
than itself. 

The progress of the sciences they considered 
but as a secondary object, as an instrument of per- 
petuating or extending their power. They sought 
truth only to diffuse errors ; and it is not to be won* 
dered they so seldom found her. 

In the mean time, slow and feeble as was this 
progress of every kind, it would not have been at- 
tainable, if these men had not known the art of 
writing, the only way by which traditions can be 
rendered secure and permanent, and knowledge, 
in proportion as it increases, be communicated and 
transmitted to posterity 

Accordingly, hieroglyphic writing was either 
one of their first inventions, or had been discover- 
ed prior to the formation of casts assuming to 
themselves the prerogative of instruction. 

As the view of these casts was not to enlighten, 
but to govern the mind, they not only avoided 
communicating to the people the whole of iheir 
knowledge, but adulterated with errors such por- 
tions as they thought proper to disclose. They 



44 

taught not what they believed to be true, but what 
they thought favorable to their own end. 

Every thing which the people received from 
them had in it a strange mixture of something su- 
pernatural, sacred, celestial, which led these'men 
to be regarded as beings superior to humanity, as 
invested with a divine character, as deriving from 
heaven itself information prohibited to the rest of 
mankind. 

These men had therefore two doctrines, one 
for themselves, the other for the people. Fre- 
quently even, as they were divided into many or- 
ders, each order reserved to itself its own myste- 
ries. All the inferior orders were at once both 
knaves and dupes ; and it was only by a few adepts 
that all the mazes of this hypocritical system were 
understood and developed* 

No circumstance proved more favorable to the 
establishment of this double doctrine, than the 
changes which time, and the intercourse and mix- 
tures of nations, introduced into language. The 
double-doctrine men, preserving the old language, 
or that of another nation, thereby secured the ad- 
vantage of having one that was understood only by 
themselves. 

The flrft mode of writing, which represented 
things by a painting more or less accurate, either 
of the thing itself or of an analagous object, giv- 
ing place to a more simple mode, in which the re- 
semblance of these objects was nearly effaced, in 
which scarcely any signs were employed but such 
as were in a manner purely conventional, the se- 
cret doctrine came to have a writing, as it had be- 
fore a language to itself. 

In the origin and upon the first introduction of 
language* almost every word is a metaphor, aid 
every rhrase an allegory. The mind catches at 



45 

anee both the figurative and natural sense ; the 
word suggests at the same instant with the idea, 
the analagcus image by which it has been express- 
ed. But from the habit of employing a word in a 
figurative sense, the mind alternately fixed upon 
that alone, heedless of the original meaning : and 
thus the figurative sense of a word became gradu- 
ally its proper and ordinary signification. 

The priests by whom the first allegorical lan- 
guage was preserved, employed it with the people, 
who were no longer capable of discovering its true 
meaning; and who, accustomed to take words in 
one acceptation only, that generally received, pic- 
tured to themselves I know not what absurd and 
ridiculous fables, in expressions that conveyed to 
the minds of the priests but a plain and simple 
truth. The same use was made by the priests of 
their sacred writing. The peopls saw men, ani- 
mals, monsters, where the priests meant only to 
represent an astronomical phenomenon, an histo- 
rical occurrence of the year. 

Thus, for example, the priests, in their contem- 
plations, invented, and introduced almost every 
where, the metaphysical system of a great, im- 
mense and eternal all, of which the whole of the 
beings that existed were only parts, of which the 
various changes observable in the universe were 
but modifications. The heavens struck them in no 
other light than as groupes of stars dispersed thro' 
the immensity of space, planets describing moti- 
ons more or less complicate, and phenomena pure- 
ly physical resulting from their respective | ositi- 
ons. They affixed names to these constellations 
and planets, as well as to the fixed or moveable 
circles, invented with a view to represent their si- 
tuation and course, and explain their appearand 

But the language, the memorials, employed in 



4$ 

expressing these metaphysical opinions, these na- 
tural truths, exhibited, to the eyes -of the people 
the most extravagant system of mythology, and 
became the foundation of creeds the most absurd, 
modes of worship the most senseless, and practi- 
ces the most shameful and barbarous. 

Such is the origin of almost all the religions 
that are known to us, and which the hypocrisy or 
the extravagance of their inventors and their pro- 
selites afterwards loaded with new fables. 

These casts seized upon education, that they 
might fashion man to a more patient endurance of 
chains, embodied as it were with his existence, and 
extirpate the possibility of his desiring to break 
thenii But, if we would know to what point, even 
without the aid of superstitious terrors, these in- 
stitutions, so destructive to the human faculties, 
can extend their baneful power, we must look for 
a moment to China ; to that people who seem to 
have preceded all others in the arts and sciences, 
only to see themselves successively eclipsed by 
them all ; to that people whom the knowledge of 
artillery has not prevented from being conquered 
by barbarous nations; where the sciences, of which 
the numerous schools are open to every class of ci- 
tizens, alone lead to dignities, and at the same 
time, fettered by absurd prejudices, are condemn- 
ed to an internal mediocrity ; lastly, where even 
the invention of printing has remained an instru- 
ment totally useless in advancing the progress of 
the human mind. 

Men, whose interest it was to deceive, soon felt 
a dislike to the pursuit of truth. Content with the 
docility of the people, they conceived there was no 
need of further means to secure its continuance. 
By degrees they forgot a part of the truths con- 
cealed under their allegories ; they preserved no 
more of their ancient science than was strictly ne~ 



tessary to maintain the confidence of their disci- 
ples ; and at last they became themselves the dupes 
of their own fables. 

Then was all progress of the sciences at a stand ; 
some even of those which had been enjoyed by pre- 
ceding ages, were lost to the generation that fol- 
lowed ; and the human mind, a prey to ignorance 
and prejudice, was condemned, in those vast em- 
pires, to a shameful stagnation, of which the uni- 
form and unvaried continuance has so long been a 
dishonor to Asia, 

The people who inhabit these countries are the 
only instance that is to be met with of such civili- 
zation and such decline. Those who occupy the 
rest of the globe either have been stopped in their 
carreer, and exhibit an appearance that again brings 
to our memory the infant days of the human race, 
or they have been hurried by events through the pe- 
riods of which we have to illustrate the history. 

At the epoch we are considering, these ve- 
ry people of Asia have invented alphabetical w T ri- 
ting, which they substituted in the place of hiero- 
glyphics, probably after having employed that other 
mode, in which conventional signs are affixed to 
every idea, which is the only one that the Chinese 
are at present acquainted with. 

History and reflection may throw some light 
upon the manner in which the gradual transition 
from hieroglyphics to this intermediary sort of art, 
must have taken place ; but nothing can inform us 
with precision either in what country, or at what 
time, alphabetical writing was first brought into 
use. 

The discovery was in time introduced into 
Greece, among a people who have exercised so 
powerful and happy an influence in the progress 
of the human species, whose genius has opened 
all the avenues to truth, whom nature had prepar- 
D z 



ed, whom fate had destined to be the benefactor 
and guide of all nations and all ages ; an honor in 
which no other people has hitherto shared. One 
only nation has since dared to entertain the hope of 
presiding in a revolution new in the destiny of 
mankind. And this glory both nature and concur- 
rence of events seem to agree in reserving for her. , 
But let vis not seek to penetrate what an uncertain, 
futurity as yet conceals from us. 



^9 



FOURTH EPOCH. 

PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN MIND IN GREECE, TILL 

THE DIVISION OF SCIENCES ABOUT THE AGE 

OF ALEXANDER. 



Ti 



HE Greeks, disgusted with those kings, 
who, calling themselves the children of the gods, 
disgraced humanity by their passions and crimes, 
became divided into republics, of which Lacede- 
monia was the only one that acknowledged heredi- 
tary chiefs y but these chiefs were kept in awe 
other magistracies, were subjected, like citizens, 
to the laws, and were weakened by the division of 
royalty between the two branches of the family of 
the Heraclides* 

The inhabitants of Macedonia, of Thessaly, 
and of Epirus, allied to the Greeks by a common 
origin and the use of a similar language, and go- 
verned by princes weak and divided among them- 
selves, though unable to oppress Greece, were yet 
sufficient to preserve it at the north from the incur- 
sions of Scythian nations. 

At the west, Italy, divided into small and un- 
connected states, could occasion no apprehensions ; 
and already nearly the whole of Sicily, and the 
most delightful parts of the south of Italy, were 
occupied by Greek colonies, forming independent 
republics, but preserving at the same time, ties of 
filiation with their mother countries. Other colo- 
nics were established in the islands of yEgean sea, 
and upon jpart of the coasts of Asia-Minor, 



5© 

Accordingly the union of this part of the A* 
sialic continent to the yast empire of Cyrus, was 
in the sequel the only real danger that could threa- 
ten the independence of Greece, and the freedom 
of its inhabitants. 

Tyranny, though more durable in some colo- 
nies, and in those particularly the establishment of 
which had preceded the extirpation of the royal fa- 
milies, could be considered only as a transient and 
partial eyil, that inflicted misery on the inhabitants 
of a few towns, but without influencing the gene- 
ral spirit of the nation. 

The Greeks had derived from the eastern na- 
tions their arts, a part of their information, the use 
of alphabetical writing, and their system of religi- 
on : but it was in consequence of the intercourse 
established between herself and these nations by 
exiles, who sought an asylum in Greece, and by 
Greek travellers, who brought back with them from 
the East knowledge and errors* 

The sciences, therefore, could not become in 
this country the occupation and patrimony of an 
individual cast. The functions of priests were 
confined to the worship of the gods. Genius 
might display all its energies, without being fetter- 
ed by the pedantic observances, the systematic hy- 
pocrisy of a sacerdotal college. All men possess- 
ed an equal right to the knowledge of truth. All 
might engage in the pursuit of it, and communi- 
cate it to all, not in scraps or parcels, but in its 
w T hole extent. 

This fortunate circumstance, still more than po- 
litical freedom, wrought in the human mind, a- 
mong the Greeks, an independence, the surest 
pledge of the rapidity and greatness of its future 
progress. 

In the mean time their learned men, their sa- 
c ges, as they were called, but who soon took the 



5 1 

more modest appellation of philosophers, or friend* 
of science and wisdom, wandered in the immensi- 
ty of the two vast and comprehensive plan which 
they had embraced, j They were desirous of pene- 
trating both the nature of man, and that of the 
gods ; the origin of the world, as well as of the 
human race. They endeavoured to reduce all na- 
ture to one principle only, and the phenomena of 
the universe to one law. They attempted to in- 
clude, in a single rule of conduct, all the duties of 
morality, and secret of true happiness. 

Thus, instead of discovering truths, they forg- 
ed systems ; they neglected the observation of facts, 
to pursue the chimej their imagination ; and 

ng no Id port their opinions with 

pro _nd them by subtleties. 

Geometry and astronomy, however, were cul- 
tivated with success by these men. Greece owed 
to them the first elements of these sciences, and 
even some new truths, or at least the knowledge of 
such as they had brought with them from the Es 
not as established creeds, but as theories, of which 
they understood the principles and proofs. 

We even perceive, in the midst of the dark- 
of those systems, two happy ideas beam fc 
which will again make their appearance in more en- 
lightened ages. 

Democritus considered all the phenomena of 
the universe as the result of the combinations a 
motion of the simple bodies, of fixed and unalter- 
able form, having received an original impulse, 
and thence derived a quantity of action that under- 
goes modifications in the individual atoms, but that 
in the entire mass continues always the same. 

Pythagor of opinion that the universe 

was governed by a harmony, the principles of 
which were to be unfolded by the pr< i of 

numbers j that is, that the whole phonomena erf v 



52 

ture depended upon general laws capable of being 
ascertained by calculation. 

In these two doctrines we readily perceive the 
bold systems of Descartes, and the philosophy of 
Newton. 

Pythagorus either discovered by his own me- 
ditation, or learned from the priests of Egypt or 
of Italy, the actual disposition of the heavenly bo- 
dies, and the true system of the world. This he 
communicated to the Greeks- But the system was 
too much at variance with the testimony of the 
senses, too opposite to the vulgar opinions, for 
the feeble proofs by which it could then be support- 
ed to gain much hold upon the mind. According- 
ly it was connncd to the Pythagorean school, and 
afterwards forgotten with that school, again to ap- 
pear at the close of the sixteenth century, strength- 
ened with more certain proofs, by which it now 
triumphed not only over the repugnance of the sen- 
ses, but over the prejudices of superstition, still 
more powerful and dangerous. 

The Pythagorean school was chiefly prevalent 
in Upper Greece, where it formed legislators, and 
intrepid defenders of the rights of mankind. It 
fell under the power of tyrants, one of whom burnt 
the Pythagoreans in their own school. This was 
sufficient no doubt, to induce them not to abjure 
philosophy, not to abandon the cause of the peo- 
ple, but to bear no longer a name become so dan- 
gerous, or observe forms that would serve only 
to wake the lion rage of the enemies of liberty and 
of reason. 

A grand basis of every kind of sound philo^ 
sophy is to form for each science a precise and acu- 
rate language, every term of which shall represent 
an idea exactly determined and circumscribed ; 
and \q enable Gurselves to determine and circum* 



S3 

scribe the ideas with which the science may Le com- 
vers ant, by the mode cf rigorous analysis. 

The Greeks on the contrary took advantage of 
the corruptions of their common language to play 
upon the meaning of words, to embarrass the mind 
by contemptible equivoques, and lead it astray by 
expressing successively different ideas by the same 
sign : a practice which gave acuteness to the mind, 
at the same time, that it weakened its strength a- 
gainst chimerical difficulties. Thus this philoso- 
phy of words, by filling up the spaces where hu- 
man reason seems to stop before some obstacle 
above its strength, did not assist immediately iis 
progress and advancement, but it prepared the way 
for them ; as we shall have further occasion to ob- 
serve. 

The course of philosophy was stopped from its 
first introduction by an error at that time indeed 
excusable. This was the fixing the attention upon 
questions incapable perhaps for ever of being solv- 
ed ; suffering the mind to be led away by the im- 
portance or sublimity of objects, without thinking 
whether the means existed of compassing them ; 
wishing to establish theories, before facts had been 
collected, and to frame the universe, before it was 
yet known how to survey it. Accordingly we see 
Socrates, while he combatted the sophists and ex- 
posed their subdeties to ridicule, cr; ing to the 
Greeks to rccal to the earth this philosophy which 
had lost itself in the clouds. Not that he despised 
er astronomy, or geometry, or the observation 
of the phenomena of nature ; not that he entertain- 
ed the puerile and false idea ot reducing the human 
mind to the study of morality alone : on the c< 
trary, it was to his school and his di , 
mathematical and ph ted 

for their progress ; in the ridicule at & to be 



54 

thrown upon liim in theatrical representations, the 
reproach which afforded most pleasantry was that 
of his cultivating geometry, studying meteors, 
drawing geographical charts, and making experi- 
ments upon burning glasses, of which it is pleasant 
to remark, the earliest mention that has been trans- 
mitted to us, we owe to a buffonery of Aristopha- 
nes. 

Socrates merely wished by his advice to in- 
duce men to confine themselves to objects which 
nature has placed within their reach ; to be sure of 
every step already taken before they attempted any 
new one, and to study the space that surrounded 
them, before they precipitated themselves at ran- 
dom into an unknown space. 

The death of this man is an important event in 
the history of the human mind. It is the first crime 
that the war between philosophy and superstition 
conceived and brought forth. 

The burning of the Pythagorean school had al- 
ready signalised the war, not less ancient, not less 
eager, of the oppressors of mankind against philoso- 
phy. The one and the other will continue to be 
waged as long as there shall exist priests or kings 
upon the earth ; and these wars will occupy a con- 
spicuous place in the picture that we have still to 
delineate. 

Priests saw with grief the appearance of men 
who* cultivating the powers of reason, ascending 
to first principles, could not but discover all the ab- 
surdity of their dogmas, all the extravagance of 
their ceremonies, ail the delusion and fraud of 
their oracles and prodigies. This discovery they 
were afraid these philosophers would communicate 
to the disciples that frequented their schools ; from 
whom it might pass to all those who, to obtain au- 
thority or credit, were obliged to pay attention to 



S5 

the improvement of their minds ; and thus the 
priestly empire be reduced to the most ignorant 
class of the people, which might at last be itself 
also undeceived. 

Hypocrisy, alarmed and terrified, hastened to 
bring accusations, against the philosophers, of im- 
piety to the gods, that they might not have time to 
teach the people that these gods were the work of 
their priests. The philosophers thought to escape 
persecution by adopting, in imitation of the priests 
themselves, the practice of a double doctrine, and 
they confided to such of their disciples only whose 
fidelity had been proved, doctrines that too openly 
offended vulgar prejudices. 

But the priests represented to the people the 
most simple truths of natural philosophy as blas- 
phemies ; and Anaxagoras was prosecuted for hav- 
ing dared to assert, that the sun was larger than 
Peloponnesus. 

Socrates could not escape their fury. There 
was in Athens no longer a Pericles to watch over 
the safety of genius and of virtue. Besides, So- 
crates was still more culpable. His enmity to the 
sophists, and his zeal to bring back the attention 
of misguided philosophy to the most useful objects, 
announced to the priests that truth alone was the 
end he had in view; that he did not wish to en- 
force upon men a new system, and subject their 
imagination to his ; but that he was desirous of 
teaching them to make use of their own reason : 
and of all crimes that is what sacerdotal pride 
knows least how to pardon. 

It was at the very foot of the tomb of Socrates 
that Plato directed the lessons which he had receiv- 
ed from his master. 

His enchanting stile, his brilliant immaginati- 
£ 



5* 

on, the cheerful and dignified colouring, the inge* 
nious and happy traits, that, in his dialogues, dis- 
pel the dryness of philosophical discussion ; the 
maxims of a mild and pure morality which he knew 
how to infuse into them ; the art with which he 
brings his personages into action, and preserves to 
each his distinct character; all those beauties, 
which time and the revolution of opinion have been 
unable to tarnish, must doubtless have obtained a 
favorable reception for the visionary ideas that too 
often form the basis of his works, and that abuse 
of words which his master had so much censured 
in the sophists, but from which he could not pre- 
serve the first of his disciples. 

In reading these dialogues we are astonished at 
their being the production of a philosopher who, by 
an inscription placed on the door of his school, for- 
bad the entrance of any one who had not studied 
geometry ; and that he, who maintains with such 
confidence, systems so far fetched and so frivolous, 
should have been the founder of a sect by whom, 
for the first time, the foundations of the certainty 
of human knowledge were subjected to a severe 
examination, and even others made to tremble that 
a more enlightened reason might have been induc- 
ed to respect. 

But the contradiction disappears when we con- 
sider that in his dialogues, Plato never speaks in 
his own person ; that Socrates, his master, is made 
to express himself with the modesty of doubt ; that 
the systems are exhibited in the names of those 
who were, or whom Plato supposed to be, the au- 
thors of them ; that hereby these dialogues are 
school of pyrrhonism, and that Plato has known 
how to display in them at once the adventurous 
imagination of a learned man, amusing himself 
with combining and dissecting spendid hypothesis, 



57 

and the reserve of a philosopher, giving scope to 
his fancy, but without suffering himself to be hur- 
ried awav by it ; because his reason, armed with a 
salutary doubt, had wherewithal to defend itself 
against illusions, however seducing might be their 
charms. 

The schools, in which were perpetuated the 
doctrine and especially the principles and forms of 
a first institutor, to which however their respective 
successors by no means observed a servile adher- 
ence, these schools possessed the advantage of unit- 
ing together by the ties of a liberal fraternity, men 
intent upon penetrating the secrets of nature. If 
the opinion of the master had frequently an influ- 
ence in them, that ought to belong only to the pro- 
vince of reason, and the progress of knowledge 
was thereby suspended ; yet did they still more con- 
tribute to its speedy and extensive propagation, at 
a time when, printing being unknown, and manu- 
scrips exceedingly rare, these institutions, the fame 
of which attracted pupils from every part of Greece, 
were the only powerful means of cherishing in that 
country a taste for philosophy, and of disseminat- 
ing new truths. 

The rival schools contended with a degree o£ 
animosity that produced a spirit of party or sect ; 
and not seldom was the interest of truth sacrificed 
to the success of some tenet, in which every mem- 
ber of the sect considered his pride in a manner as 
concerned. The personal passion of making con- 
verts corrupted the more generous one of enligh- 
tening mankind. But at the same time, this rival- 
ship kept the mind in a state of activity that was 
not without its use. The continual sight of such 
deputes, the interest that was taken in these com- 
bats of opinion, awakened and attached to the I 
dy of philosophy a multitude of men, whom thr 



5 s 

mere love of truth could neither have allured from 
their business and pleasure, nor even have roused 
from their indolence. 

In short, as these schools, these sects,, which 
the Greeks had the wisdom never to introduce in- 
to the public institutions, remained perfectly free ; 
as every one had the power of opening another 
school, or forming a new sect, at his pleasure, 
there was no cause to apprehend that abasement 
of reason, which, with the majority of ether nati- 
ons, was an insurmountable obstacle to the ad- 
vancement of the human mind. 

Let us consider what was the influence oi the 
philosophers of Greece on the understanding, man- 
ners, laws and governments of that country ; an 
influence that must be ascribed in a great measure 
to their not having, and even not wishing to have, 
a political existence ; to its being held as a rule of 
conduct common to all their sects, voluntarily to 
keep aloof from public affairs; and lastly, to their 
affecting to distinguish themselves from other men 
by their lives, as well as their opinions.: 

In delineating these different sects, we shall at- 
tend less to the systems, and more to the princi- 
ples of their philosophy ; we shall not attempt, 
as has frequently been done, to exhibit a precise 
view of the absurd doctrines which a language, be- 
come almost unintelligible, conceals from, us; but 
shall endeavor to shew by what general errors they 
were seduced into those deceitful paths, and to find 
the origin of these in the natural course of the hu- 
man mind. 

Above all things we shall be careful to display 
ihe progress of those sciences that really deserved 
the appellation, and the successive improvements 
that were introduced into them. 

At this epoch philosophy embraced them all, 



59 

medicine excepted, which was already separated 
from it. The writings of Hippocrates will shew 
us what was at that period the state of this science, 
as well as of those naturally connected with it, but 
which had yet no existence distinct from that con- 
nection. 

The mathematical sciences had been cultivat- 
ed with success in the schools of Thales and Py- 
thagoras. Meanwhile they rose there very little 
above the point at which they had stopped in the 
sacerdotal colleges of the Eastern nations. But 
from the birth of Plato's school they soared infi- 
nitely above that barrier, which the idea of confin- 
ing them to an immediate utility and practice had 
erected. 

This philosopher was the first who solved the 
problem of the duplication of the cube, by the hy- 
pothesis, indeed, of a continued motion ; but the 
process was ingenious, and strictly accurate. His 
early disciples discovered the conic sections, and 
demonstrated their principal properties ; thereby 
opening upon the human mind that vast horizon 
of knowledge, where, as long as the world shall 
endure, it may exercise its powers without ceasing, 
while every step the horizon retires as the mind ad- 
vances. 

The sciences connected with politics did not 
derive from philosophy alone their progress among 
the Greeks. In these small republics, jealous of 
preserving both their independence and their liber- 
ty, the practice was almost generally prevalent of 
confiding to one man, not the power of making 
laws, but the function of digesting and presenting 
them to the people, by whom they were examin- 
ed, and from whom they received their direct 
sanction. 

E z 



6o 

Thus the people imposed a task on the phi!o« 
sopher, whose wisdom or whose virtues had re- 
commended him to their confidence, but they con- 
ferred on him no authority ; they exercised alone 
and of themselve what we have since called by the 
name of legislative power. But the practice, so 
fatal, of calling superstition to the aid of political 
institutions, has too often corrupted the execution 
of an idea so admirably fitted to give that system- 
atic unity to the laws of a country, which alone 
can render their operation sure and easy, as well 
as maintain the duration of them. Nor had poli- 
tics yet acquired principles sufficiently invariable 
not to fear that the legislators might introduce in- 
to these institutions their prejudices and theirpas- 
sions. 

Their object could not be, as yet, to found 
upon the basis of reason, upon the rights which 
all men have equally received from nature, upon 
the maxims of universal justice, the superstruc- 
ture of a society of men equal and free ; but mere- 
ly to establish laws by which the hereditary mem- 
bers of a society, already existing, might preserve 
their liberty, live secure from injustice, and, by ex- 
hibiting an imposing appearance to their neigh- 
bours, continue in the enjoyment of their indepen- 
dence. 

As it was supposed that these laws, almost 
universally connected with religion, and conse- 
crated by oaths, were to endure forever, it was 
less an object of attention to secure to a people the 
means of affecting, in a peaceable manner, their 
reform, than to guard from every possible change 
such as were fundamental, and to take care that the 
reforms of detail neither incroached upon the sys- 
tem, nor corrupted the spirit of them. 

Such institutions were sought for as were cal- 



Gi 

culated to cherish and give energy to t 
county, in which was included a love of its 
lation and even usages; such an organization 
powers, as would secure the execution of the laws 
against the negligence or corruption of magistrates, 
and the restless disposition o£ the multitude. 

The rich, who alone were in a capacity of ac- 
quiring knowledge, by seizing on the reins of a 
thority might oppress the poor, and compel them 

to throw themselves into the arms of a tyrant 

The ignorance and fickleness of the people, and 
its jealousy of powerful citizens, might suggest to 
such citizens both the desire and the means of es- 
tablishing aristocratic despotism, or of surrender- 
ing an enfeebled state to the ambition of its neigh- 
bors. Obliged to guard at once against both these 
rocks, the Greek legislators had recourse to com- 
binations more or less happy, but always bearing 
ihe stamp of this sagacity, this artifice, which ac- 
cordingly characterised the general spirit of the 
nation ..... 

It would be difficult to find in modern repub- 
lics, or even in the plans sketched by philosophers, 
a single institution of which the -Greek republics 
did not suggest the outlines, or furnish the ex- 
ample. For, in the Amphictyonic league, as well 
as in that of the Etolians, Arcadians, Achasans, 
have instances of federal constitutions, of a union 
more or less close ; and there were established a 
less barbarous right of nations, and more liberal 
rules of commerce between these different people, 
connected by a common origin, by the use of the 
same language, and by a similarity of manners, 
opinions and religious pursuasions. 

The mutual relations of agriculture, indu 

1 commerce, with ihe laws and constitution off a 

te, their influence upon its prosperity, power, 



6z 

freedom, could not haye escaped the observation 
of a people ingenious and active, and at the same 
time watchful of the public interest : and accord- 
ingly among them are perceived the first traces of 
that science, so comprehensive and useful, known 
at present by the name of political economy. 

The observation alone of established govern- 
ments was therefore sufficient speedily to convert 
politics into an extensiye science* Thus in the 
writings even of the philosophers, it is a science 
rather of facts, and, if I may so speak, empirical, 
than a true theory founded upon general principles,, 
drawn from nature, and acknowledged by reason. 
Such is the point of view in which we ought to re- 
gard the political ideas of Aristotle and Plato, if 
we would discover their meaning, and form of thera 
a just estimate. 

Almost all the Greek institutions suppose the 
existence of slavery, and the possibility of uniting 
together, in a public place, the whole community 
of citizens : two most important distinctions, of 
which we ought never to lose sight, if we would 
judge rightly of the effect of these institutions, 
particularly on the extensive and populous nations 
of modern times. But upon the first we cannot 
reflect without the painful idea, that at that period 
the most perfect forms of government had for ob- 
ject the liberty or happiness of at most but half the 
human species. 

With the Greeks, education was an important 
part of policy. Men were formed for their coun- 
try, much more than for themselves or their fami- 
ly. This principle can only be embraced by com- 
motions little populous, in which it is more par- 
donable to suppose a national interest, separate 
from the common interest of humanity. It is prac- 
ticable only in countries where the most painful la- 



bors of culture an<J of the arts are performed by 
slaves. This branch of education v. as restricted 
almost entirely to such bodily exercises, such man- 
ners and habits as were calculated to excite an ex- 
clusive patriotism ; the other branches were acquir- 
ed, as a matter of free choice in the schools of the 
philosophers or rhetoricians, and the shops oi 
artists ; and this freedom was a farther ca 
the superiority of the Greeks. 

In their policy, as in their philosophy, a gene- 
ra! principle is observable, to v> hich history sen 
ly furnishes any exceptions : they aimed less in 
their laws at extirpating the causes of an evil, r h 
destroying its effects, by opposing these causes one 
to another; they wished rather to take advant 
of prejudices and vices, than to disperse or sup- 
press them ; they attended more frequently to the 
means by which to deform and brutal: ...to 

inflame, to mislead his sensibility, than to refine 
and purify the inclinations and desires, which are 
the necessary result of his moral constitution : er- 
rors occasioned by the more general one of mistak- 
ing for the man of nature, him who exhibited in 
his character the actual state of civilization, thai 
to say, man corrupted by prejudices, by the inte- 
rest of factious passions, and by social habits. 

This observation is of the more importe. 
and it will be the more necessary to clevelcpe 
origin, in order the better to destroy it, as it has 
been transmitted to our own age, and still too 
ten corrupts both our morals and our politics. 

If we compare the legislation, and 
the form and rules of judicature or 

in the eastern nations, we shall find that, in some, 
the laws are a yoke to which force has 
necks of slaves ; in others, the conci: m- 

mon compact between the r of the society. 



In some the object of legal form is, that the will 
of the master be executed ; in others that the li- 
berty of the citizens be not oppressed. In some 
the law is made for the party that imposes it ; in 
others for the party that is to submit to it. In some 
the fear of the law is enforced, in others the love 
of it inculcated. And these distinctions we also 
find in modern nations, between the laws of a free 
people, and those of a country of slaves*! In 
Greece we shall find that man possessed at least a 
consciousness of his rights, if he did not yet know 
them, if he eould not fathom the nature, and em- 
brace and circumscribe the extent of them., 1 

At this epoch, of the first dawn of philosophy 
and first advance of the sciences among the Greeks, 
the fine arts rose to a degree of perfection known 
at that time to no other people, and scarcely equal- 
led since by almost any nation. Homer lived at 
the period of those dissentions which accompanied 
the fall of the tyrants, and the formation of repub- 
lics. Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Thucydides, 
Demcsdienes, Phidias, Apelles, were the contem- 
poraries of Socrates or of Plato. 

We shall give a delineation of the progress of 
those arts ; we shall enquire into its causes ; we 
shall distinguish between what maybe considered as 
a perfection of the art itself, and what is to be as- 
cribed only to be the happy genius of the artist : a 
distinction calculated tQ destroy those narrow li- 
mits to which the improvement of the fine arts has 
been restricted. We shall explain the influence 
that forms of government, systems of legislation, 
and the spirit of religious observances have exer* 
cised on their progress, and shall examine what 
they have derived from the advances of philoso* 
phy, and what philosophy itself has derived frQOfe 



65 

We shall shew that liberty, arts, knowledge, 
have contributed to the suavity and melioration oi 
manners ; that the vices of the Greeks, so often as- 
cribed to their civilization, were those of ruder a- 
ges, and which the acquirements we have menti- 
oned have in all instances qualified, when they have 
proved unable to extirpate them. We shall de- 
monstrate that the eloquent declamations which 
have been made against the arts and sciences, are 
founded upon a mistaken application of history ; 
-;nd that, on the contrary, the progress of virtue 
has ever accompanied that of knowledge, as the 
progress of corruption has always followed or an- 
nounced its decline. 



66 



FIFTH EPOCH, 



PROGRESS OF THE SCIENCES, FROM THEIR DIVISION 
TO THEIR DECLINE. 



Pi 



Lx\TO was still living when Aristotle, his 
disciple, opened, in Athens itself, a school, the rival 
of that of his master. 

He not only embraced all the sciences, but ap- 
plied the method observed in philosophy to the arts 
of eloquence and poetry. He was the first whose 
daring genius conceived the propriety of extending 
this method to every thing attainable by human in- 
telligence ; since, as this intelligence exercised in 
all cases the same faculties, it ought invariably to 
be governed by the same laws. 

The more comprehensive was the plan he 
formed, the more he felt the necessity of separating 
the different parts of it, and of fixing with greater 
precision the limits of each-. And from this epoch 
the majority of philosophers, and even whole sects, 
are seen confining their attention to some only of 
those parts. 

The mathematical and physical sciences formed 
of themselves a grand division. As they were 
founded upon calculation and the observance of the 
phenomena of nature, as what they taught was in- 
dependent of the opinions which embroiled the 
sects, they separated themselves from philosophy, 
over which these sects stiU reigned. They accord- 
ingly became ihe study of the learned, who had 
the wisdom almost universally to keep alool from 



07 

the disputes of the schools, which were conducted 
in a manner calculated rather to promote the tran- 
sient fame of the professors, than aid the progress 
of philosophy itself. And soon this word ceased 
to be employed, except for the purpose of express- 
ing the general principles of the system of the 
world, metaphysics, logic, and morals, of which 
the science of politics formed a part. 

Fortunately the era of this division preceded 
the period in which Greece, after long struggles* 
was destined to lose her freedom. The sciences 
found, in the capital of Egypt, an asylum, which, 
by the despots who governed it, would probably 
have been refused to philosophy. But as the prin- 
ces derived no inconsiderable portion of their rich- 
es and power from the united commerce of the Me- 
diterranean and Asiatic seas, it was their interest 
to encourage sciences useful to navigation and com- 
merce. 

Accordingly, they escaped the speedy decline 
that was soon experienced by philosophy the splen- 
dor of which vanished with the departure of liber- 
ty. The tyranny of the Romans, so regardless of 
the progress of knowledge, did not extend to E- 
gypt till a late period, and when the town of Alex- 
andria was become necessary to the subsistence of 
Rome. By its population, its wealth, the great 
influx of strangers, the establishments formed by 
the Ptolemies, and which the conquerors did not 
give themselves the trouble to destroy, this town, 
the centre of commerce, and already possessing 
wherewith to be the metropolis of the sciences, was 
sufficient of itself to the preservation of their sacred 
flame. 

The sect of Academics, in which, from its ori- 
gin, the mathematics had been cultivated, and 

F 



68 

which confined its philosophical instruction almost 
entirely to proving the utility of doubt, and ascer- 
taining the narrow limits of certainty, must of 
course have been a sect of men of learning ; and 
as the doctrine had nothing in it calculated to give 
alarm to despots, it flourished in the school of A- 
lexandria. 

The theory of conic sections, with the method 
of employing it, whether for the constructing of 
geometrical loci, or for the solution of problems, 
and the discovery of some other curves, extended 
the limits, hitherto so narrow, of the sciences of 
geometry. 

Archimedes discovered the quadrature of the 
parabola, and measured the surface of the sphere. 
These were the first advances in the theory of li- 
mits which determines the ultimate value of a quan- 
tity, or, in other words, the value to which the 
quantity in an infinite progression incessantly ap- 
proaches, but never attains ; that Jtheory which 
teaches how to determine the ratios of evanescent 
quantities, and by other processes to deduce from 
these ratios the propositions of finite magnitudes : 
in a word, that very calculus which the moderns, 
with more pride than justice, have termed the cal- 
culus of infinities. It was Archimedes who first 
determined the proportion of the diameter of a cir- 
cle to its circumference in numbers nearly true 
who taught us how to obtain values approaching 
nearer and nearer to accuracy, and made known 
the methods of approximation, that harpy remedy 
for the defects of the known methods, ano frequent- 
ly of the science itself. 

He may, in some respect, be considered as the 
father of rational or theoretical mechanics. To 
him we are indebted for the theory oi the lever, 
as well as the discovery of that principle oi hydro-. 



6 9 

statics, that a body immersed in any fluid, loses a 
portion of its weight equal to the mass of fluid it 
has displaced. 

The screw that bears his name, his burning- 
glasses, the prodigies of the siege of Syracuse, at- 
test his skill in the art of constructing mechanical 
instruments, which the learned had neglected, be- 
cause the principles of the theory at that time known 
were inadequate to the attainment. These grand 
discoveries, these new sciences place Archimedes 
among these happy geniuses whose life forms ail 
epoch in the history of man, and whose existence 
may be considered as one of the munificent gifts of 
nature. 

It is in the school of Alexandria that we find 
the first traces of algebra ; that is to say, of the 
calculation ol quantities considered simply as such. 
The nature of the problems proposed and resolved 
in the work of Diophantus, made it necessary that 
numbers should be considered as having a general 
value, undetermined in their particular relations, 
and subject only to certain conditions. 

But this science had not then, as at present, its 
appropriate signs, methods and technical opera- 
tions. The general value of quantities was repre- 
sented by words ; and it was only by means of a 
series of reasonings that the solution of problems 
was discovered and developed. 

The observations of the Chaldeans, transmitted 
to Aristotle by Alexander, accelerated the progress 
of astronomy. The most brilliant portion of them 
was due to the genius of Hipparchus. And if. 
ter him in astronomy, as after Archimedes 
me try and mechanics, we no longer perceive llv 
disco\ ei ies and acquisitions which chang 
were, the whole face of a science, they yet for a 
long time continued to improve, e nd er> 

Ives by the truths of detail. 



7 o 

' In his history of animals, Aristotle had laid 
down the principles and furnished an excellent mo- 
del for observing with accuracy, and describing ac- 
cording to system, the objects of nature, as well 
as for classing those observations, and catching with 
readiness the general results which they exhibited. 
The history of plants and of minerals were treated 
afterwards by others, but with inferior precision, 
and with views less extensive and less philosophical* 

The progress of anatomy was very slow, not 
only because religious prejudices would not admit 
of the dissection of dead bodies, but from the vul- 
err opinion which regarded the touch of such bo- 
dies as a sort of moral defilement* 

The medical system of Hippocrates was no- 
thing more than a science of observation, which as 
yet had led only to empirical methods. The spirit 
of sect, and the love of hypothetical positions soon 
Infected it. But if the number of errors was great- 
er than that of new truths, if the prejudices or sys- 
tems of the practitioners did more harm than their 
observations were calculated to do good, yet it can- 
not be denied that the science made, during this 
epoch, a real, though very slight progress. 

Aristotle introduced into natural philosophy 
neither the accuracy nor the prudent reserve which 
characterise his history of animals. He paid tri- 
bute to the customs of his age, to the taste of the 
schools, by disfiguring it with those hypothetical 
data, w T hich, from their vague nature, explain eve- 
ry thing with a sort of readiness, because they are 
able to explain nothing with precision. 

Besides, observation alone was not enough ; 
experiments were necessary : these demanded in- 
struments ; and it appears that at that time men had 
not sufficiently collected facts, had not examined 
diem with the proper minuteness, to feel the want*. 



7« 

to conceive the idea of this mode of interrogating 
nature, and obliging her to answer us. 

At this epoch also, the history of the progress 
of natural philosophy is confined to a small number 
of truths, acquired by chance, and derived from 
observations furnished by the practice of the arts, 

rather than from the researches of the learned 

Hydraulics, and especially optics, present us with 
a harvest somewhat less sterile ; but these also con- 
sist rather of facts, which were remarked because 
they fell in the way and forced attention, than of 
theories or physical laws discovered by experiments 
or obtained by meditation and study. 

Agriculture had hitherto been confined to 
the simple routine and a few regulations, which 
priests, in transmitting them to the people, had 
corrupted with their superstition. It became with 
the Greeks, and still more with the Romans, an 
important and respected art ; and men of greatest 
learning employed themselves in collecting its usa- 
ges and precepts. These collections of facts, pre- 
cisely described and judiciously arranged, were 
useful to enlighten the practical cultivator, and to 
extend such methods as had proved valuable ; but 
the age of experiment and regular deduction was 
still very far off. 

The mechanic arts began to connect themselves 
with the sciences. Philosophers examined the la- 
bors, sought the origin, and studied the history of 
these arts ; at the same time they described the 
processes and fruits of those which were cultivated 
in different countries., and were induced to collect 
together their observations, and. transmit them to 
posterity. 

Thus Pliny, in the comprehensive plan of his 

natural history, includes man, nature and the arts 

1 iiis work is a valuable and complete inventory 

F2 



what at that time constituted the true stores of the 
human mind : nor can his claims to our gratitude 
be superseded by the charge, however merited, of 
his having collected with too little discrimination 
and too much credulity, what the ignorance or ly- 
ing vanity of historians presented to his avidity, 
not to be satiated, of knowing every thing. 

In the midst of the decline of Greece, Athens, 
which, in the days of its power, had honored phi- 
losophy and letters, owed to them, in its turn, the 
preserving for a longer period some remains of its 
ancient splendor. In its tribune, indeed, the des- 
tinies of Greece and Asia were no longer decided ; 
it was however, in the schools of Athens that the 
Romans acquired the secrets of eloquence ; and it 
was at the feet cf Demosthenes' lamp that the first 
of their orators was formed. 

The academy, the lyceum, the portico, the 
gardens of Epicurus, were the nursery and princi- 
pal school of the four sects that disputed the em- 
pire of philosophy. 

It was taught in the academy, that every thing 
is doubtful ; that man can attain, as to any object,, 
neither absolute certainty nor a true comprehen- 
sion ; in fine, and it was difficult to go farther, 
that he could not be sure of this very impossibility 
of knowing any thing, and that it was proper to 
doubt even of the necessity of doubting. 

The opinions of different philosophers, were 
explained, defended and opposed in this school, 
but merely as hypotheses calculated to exercise the 
mind and illustrate more fully, by the uncertainty 
which accompanied these disputes, the vanity of 
human knowledge and absurdity of the dogmatical 
confidence of the other sects. 

Tins doctrine, if it go no farther than to dis- 
countenance rcsoniiag upon words to which we cm 






n 

affix no clear and precise ideas; than to pro;. 
tion our belief in any proposition to the degree 
probability it bears ; than to ascertain, as to every 
species of knowledge, the bounds of certainty we 
are able to acquire, this scepticism is then ration- 
al ; but when it extends to demonstrated truths ; 
when it attacks the principles of morality, it be- 
comes either weakness or insanity ; and such is the 
extreme into which the sophists have fallen, who 
succeeded in the academy the first disciples of 
Plato. 

We shall follow the steps of these sceptics, and 
exhibit the cause of their errors. We shall ex- 
amine what, in the extravagance of their doctrine, 
is to be ascribed to the passion, so prevalent, of 
distinguishing themselves by whimsical opinions ; 
and shall shew, that, though sufficiently refuted by 
the instinct of other men, by the instinct which di- 
rected these sophists themselves in the ordinary 
conduct of life, they were neither properly refuted* 
nor even understood, by the philosophers of the 
day. 

Meanwhile this sceptical mania did not pos- 
sess the whole sect of aceademics ; and the doctrine; 
of an eternal idea, just, comely, honest, indepen- 
dent of the interests and conventions of men, and 
even of their existence, an idea that, imprinted on 
the soul, becomes the principle of duty and the law 
of our actions, this doctrine derived from the di- 
alogues of Plato, was still inculcated in his school, 
and constituted the basis of moral instruction. 

Aristotle was no better skilled than his mas- 
ter in the art of analysing ideas ; that is, of ascend- 
ing step by step to the most simple ideas that have 
entered into their combination, of observing the 
formation of these simple ideas themselves, of fol- 
lowing in these operations the regular procedure of 
the mind, and developement of its faculties. 



74 

His metaphysics, like those of the other philo- 
sophers, consisted of a vague doctrine, founded 
sometimes upon an abuse of words, and sometimes 
upon mere hypothesis. 

To him, however, we owe that important truth, 
that first step in the science of the human mind, 

that OUR IDEAS, EVEN SUCH AS ARE MOST AB- 
STRACT, MOST STRICTLY INTELLECTUAL, SO tO 
speak, HAVE THEIR ORIGIN in OUR SENSATIONS. 

But this truth he failed to support by any demon- 
stration. It was rather the intuitive perception of 
a man of genius, than the result of a series of ob- 
servations accurately analysed, and systematically 
combined, in order to derive from them some ge- 
neral truth. Accordingly, this germ, cast in an un- 
grateful soil, produced no useful fruit till after a 
period of more than twenty centuries. 

ARisTOTLE,in his dialects which have reduced 
all demonstrations to a train of arguments drawn 
up in a syllogistical form, and then divided all 
imaginable propositions under four heads, teaches 
us to discover, among the possible combinations of 
propositions of these four classes in collections of 
three and three, those which answer to the nature 
of conclusive syllogisms, and may be admitted 
without apprehension. In this way we may judge 
of the cogency or weakness of an argument, mere- 
ly by knowing to what class it belongs : and thus the 
art of right reasoning is subjected in some measure 
to technical rules. 

This ingenious idea has hitherto remained use- 
less ; but perhaps it may one day become the lead- 
ing steps toward a perfection which the art of rea- 
soning and discussion seems still to expect. 

Every virtue, according to Aristotle, is plac- 
ed between two vices, of which one is its defect, 
and the other its excess ; it is only, as it were, one- 






75 

©f those natural inclinations which reason equa 
forbids us too strongly to resist, and too slavishly 
to obey. 

This general principle must have been sun-. 

:ed to him by one of those vague ideas of or- 
der and conformity, so common at that time in 
philosophy ; but he proved its truth, by apply- 
ing it to the vocabulary of words which in the 
Greek language, expressed what were called the 
virtues. 

About the same period, two new sects found- 
ing their systems of morality, at least in appear- 
ance, upon two contrary principles, divided the 
neral mind, extended their influence beyond the 
limits of their schools, and hastened the fall of 
Greek superstition ; but, unhappily a superstition 
more gloomy, more dangerous, more inimical to 
knowledge, was soon to succeed it. 

The stoics made virtue and happiness consist in 
the possession of a soul alike insensible to pleasure 
and to pain, free from all the passions, superior to 
every weakness, knowing no absolute good but 
virtue, no real evil but remorse. They belies 
that man was capable of raising himself to this ele- 
vation, if he possessed a strong and constant 
sire of doing so ; and that then, inde 
fortune, always master of himself, he was equally 
inaccessible to vice and calami t v. 

j individual mind animates the world : it is 
present in every thing, if it be not , if 

there exist any other thing than itself. The souls 
of human beings are emanations of it. That oi 
sage, who has not defiled the purity of his or' 
is re-united, at the instant of death, to this uni- 
versal spirit. Accordingly, to the sage, death 
would be a blessing, if, sub to nature, bar- 



76 

dened against what vulgar men call evils, it was 
not more glorious in him to regard it with indiffe- 
rence. 

By Epicurus, happines is placed in the enjoy- 
ment of pleasure, and in freedom from pain. Vir- 
tue, according to him, consists in following the na- 
tural inclinations of the heart, at the same time 
taking care to purify and direct them. The prac- 
tice of temperance, which prevents pain, and, by 
preserving our faculties in their full force, secures 
all the enjoyments that nature has provided for us ; 
the care to guard ourselves against hateful and vi- 
olent passions that torment and rend the soul deli- 
vered up to their bitterness and fury ; the farther 
care to cultivate, on the contrary, the mild and 
tender affections ; to be frugal of pleasures that 
How from benevolence ; to preserve the soul in pu« 
rity, that we may avoid the shame and remorse 
which punish vice, and enjoy the delicious senti- 
ment that is the reward of laudable actions : such 
is the road that conducts at once both to happiness 
and virtue. 

Epicurus regarded the universe only as a col- 
lection of atoms, the different combinations of 
which were subjected to necessary laws. The hu- 






The atoms which composed it united when the 
body began to live, were dispersed at the moment 
of death, to unite themselves again to the common 
mass, and enter into new combinations. 

Unwilling too violently to shock popular pre- 
judices, he admitted of Gods ; but indifferent to 
the actions of men, strangers to the order of the 
universe, and governed, like other beings, by the 
general laws of its mechanism, they were a sort of 
excrescence of the system. 



77 

Men of morose, proud, and unjust characters, 
screened themselves under the mask of stoicism, 
while voluptuous and corrupt men frequently stole 
into the gardens of Epicurus. Some calumniated 
the principles of the Epicureans, who were accus- 
ed of placing the sovereign good in the gratificati- 
on of sensual appetites. Others turned into ridicule 
the pretensions of the sage Zeno, who whether a 
slave at the mill, or tormented with the gout, was 
equally happy, free and independent. 

The philosophy that pretended to soar above 
nature, and that which wished only to obey nature ; 
the morality which acknowledged no other good 
than virtue, and that which placed happiness in the 
indulgence of the natural inclinations, led to the 
same practical consequences, though departing 
from such opposite princples, and holding so con- 
trary a language. This resemblance between the 
moral precepts of all svstems of religion, and all 
sects of philosophy, would be sufficient to prove 
that they have a foundation independent of the 
dogmas of those religions, or the principles of those 
sects ; that it is in the moral constitution of man w r e 
must seek the basis of his duties, the origin of his 
ideas of justice and virtue : a truth which the sect 
of Epicureans approached more nearly than any o- 
ther ; and no circumstance perhaps so much contri- 
buted to draw upon it the enmity of all classes of 
hypocrites with whom morality was no commercial 
object of which they ambitiously contended lor die 
monopoly. 

The fall of the Greek republics involved that 
of the politi s. After Plato, Aristotle, 

anJ Xenophon. t ceased to be included 

in the 

But It is time i ; of an event that chang- 

ed the lot oi a c t of the 



7§ 

exercised on the progress of the mind an influence 
that had reached even to ourselves. 

If we except India and China, the city of 
Rome had extended its empire over every nation 
in which human intelligence had risen above the 
weakness of its earliest infancy. 

It gave laws to all the countries into which the 
Greeks had introduced their language, their scien- 
ces, and their philosophy ; and these nations, held 
by a chain w T hich victory had fastened to the foot 
of the capitol, no longer existed but by the will of 
Rome, and for the passions of its chiefs. 

A true picture of the constitution of this so- 
vereign city will not be foreign to the object of this 
work. We shall there see the origin of heredita* 
ry patrician rank, and the artful means that w^ere 
adopted to give it greater stability and force, by 
rendering it less odious ; we shall there see a peo- 
ple inured to arms, but never employing them in 
domestic clissentions ; uniting real power to legal 
authority, yet scarcely defending themselves a- 
gainst a haughty senate, that while it rivitted the 
chains of superstition, dazzled them at the same 
time with the splendor of their victories ; a great 
nation, the sport in turn both of tyrants and its de- 
fenders, and the patient dupe, for four centuries, 
of a mode of taking votes, absurd but consecrat- 
ed. 

We shall see this constitution, made for a sin- 
gle city, change its nature without changing its 
form, when it was necessary to extend it to a great 
empire unable to maintain itself but by continual 
wars, and presently destroyed by its own armies % 
and lastly, the people, the sovereign people, de- 
based by the habit of being maintained at the ex- 
pence of the public treasury, and corrupted by the 
bounty of the sens Lori , re) ling to an individual the 
imaginary remains oi their useless ireedom. 



19 

The ambition of the Romans led them to search 
in Greece for masters in the art of eloquence, which 
in Rome was one of the roads to fortune. That 
taste for exclusive and refined enjoyments, that 
want of new pleasures, which springs from wealth 
and idleness, made them court other arts of the 
Greeks, and even the conversation of their philo- 
sophers. But the sciences, philosophy, and the 
arts connected with painting, were plants foreign 
to the soil of Rome. The avarice of the conquer- 
ors covered Italy with the master pieces of Greece, 
taken by violence from the temples, from cities of 
vhich they constituted the ornament, and where 
hey served as a consolation under slavery. But 
he productions of no Roman dared mix with them, 
Jicero, Lucretius and Seneca wrote eloquently in 
heir language upon philosophy, but it was upon 
Grecian philosophy ; and to reform the barbarous 
calendar of Numa, Caesar was obliged to employ 
a mathematician from Alexandria. 

Rome, long torn by the factions of ambitious 
generals, busied in new conquests, or a5*itated by 
civil discords, fell at last from its restless liberty, 
into a military despotism still more restless. And 
where, among the chiefs that aspired to tyranny, 
and s©on after under the despots who feared truth 
and equally hated both talents and virtue, were the 
tranquil meditations of philosophy and the scien- 
ces to find a place ? Besides, the sciences and phi- 
losophy are necessarily neglected as barren and un- 
profitable in every country where some honorable 
career, leading to wealth and dignities, is open 
to all whom their natural inclination may dispose 
to study : and such at Rome was that of jurispru- 
dence. 

When laws, as in the east, are allied to religi- 
on, the right of interpreting them becomes one of 

G 



8o 

the strongest supports of sacerdotal tyranny. In 
Greece they had constituted a part of the code 
given to each city by its respective legislator, who 
had assimilated them to the spirit of the constitu- 
tion and government which he established. They 
experienced but few alterations. The magistrates 
frequently abused them, and individual instances 
of injustice were not less frequent ; but the vices 
of the laws never extended in Greece to a regular 
system of robbery, reduced to the cold forms of cal- 
culation. In Rome, where for a long time no other 
authority was known but the tradition of customs, 
where the judges declared every year by what prin- 
ciples disputes would be decided during the conti- 
nuance of their magistracy, where the first writ- 
ten laws were a compilation from the Greek laws, 
drawn up by the decemvirs, more anxious to pre- 
serve their power than to honor it by presenting a 
sound code of legislation : in Rome, where, after 
that period, laws, dictated at one time by the par- 
ty of the senate, and at another by the party of the 
people, succeeded each other with rapidity, and 
were incessantly either destroyed or confirmed, me- 
liorated or aggravated by new declarations, the 
multiplicity, the complication and the obscurity of 
the laws, an inevitable consequence of the fluctua- 
tion of the language*, soon made of this study a 
science apart. The senate, taking advantage of 
the respect of the people for the ancient instituti- 
ons, soon felt that the privilege of interpreting laws 
was nearly equivalent to that of making new ones ; 
and accordingly this body abounded with lawyers. 
Their power survived that of the senate itself ; it 
increased under the emperors, because it is neces- 
sarily greater as the code of legislation becomes 
more anomalous and uncertain. 



8i 

Jurisprudenxe then is the only new sck 
for which we are indebted to the Romans. We 
shall trace its history, since it is connected with the 
progress which the science of legislation has made 
among the moderns, and particularly with the ob- 
stacles which that legislation has had to encounter. 
We shall show, that respect for the positive law 
of the Romans has contributed to preserve some 
ideas of the natural law of men, in order after- 
wards to prevent thes^ ideas from encreasing and 
extending themselves ; and that while we are in- 
debted to their code for a small quantity of truths, 
it has furnished us with a far greater portion of ty- 
rannical prejudices. 

The mildness of the penal laws, under the re- 
public, is worthy our notice. They in a manner 

rendered sacred the blood of a Roman citizen 

The penalty of death could not be inflicted, with- 
out calling forth that extraordinary power which an- 
nounced public calamities and danger to the coun- 
try. The whole body of the people might be claim- 
ed as judge between a single individual and the re- 
public. It was found that, with a free people, this 
mildness was the only way to prevent political dis- 
sentions from degenerating into cruel massacres ; 
the object was to correct, by the humanity of the 
laws, the ferocious manners of a people that, even 
in its sports, squandered profusely the blood 
its slaves. Accordingly, stopping at the times of 
the Gracchi, in no country have storms so numer- 
ous and violent been attended with so few crim 
or cost so little blood. 

No work of the Romans upon the subje< 
politics has descended to us. That of Cice 
on laws was probablv but an embellished extr 
from the books of the Greeks, It was not amidst 
.vuisions of e it moral 



S2 

ence could refine and perfect itself. Under the 
despotism of the Caesars, study would have expe- 
rienced no other construction than a conspiracy 
against their power. In short* nothing more clear- 
ly proves how much the Romans were ignorant of 
this science, than the example they furnish us, not 
to be equalled in the annals of history , of an un- 
interupted succession, from Nerva to Marc An- 
tony, cf five emperors, possessing at once virtue, 
talents, knowledge, a love of glory, and zeal for 
the public welfare, without a single institution ori- 
ginating from them that has marked the desire of 
fixing bounds to despotism, of preventing revolu- 
tions, and of cementing by new ties the parts of 
that huge mass, of which every thing predicted the 
approaching dissolution. 

The union of so many nations under one so- 
vereignty, the spreading too of languages which di- 
vided the empire, and which were alike familiar to 
almost every well-informed mind, these causes, 
acting in concert, must have contributed, no doubt, 
to the more equal diffusion of knowledge over a 
greater space. Another natural effect must have 
been to weaken by degrees the differences which 
separated the philosophical sects, and to unite them 
into one, that should contain such opinions of each 
as were most comformable to reason, and which 
a sober investigation had tended to confirm. This 
was the point to w 7 hich reason could not fail to 
bring philosophers, when, from the effect of time 
on the enthusiasm of sectaries, her voice alone 
was suffered to be heard. Accordingly, we find 
already, in Seneca, marks of this philosophy : in- 
deed it was never entirely distinct from the sect 
of the academics, which at length appeared to be- 
come entirely the same with it ; and the most mo- 
dern of the disciples of Plato were the founders of 
the sect of electics, 



8j 

Almost every religion of the empire had beea 
national ; but they all possessed strong lines of re- 
semblance, and in a manner a family likeness. No 
metaphisical doctrines ; many strange ceremonies, 
of the meaning of which the people, and frequent- 
ly the priest, were ignorant ; an absurd mythology, 
in which the multitude read the marvellous history 
of its Gods only, but which men better enlighten- 
ed suspected to be an allegory of doctrines more 
sublime ; bloody sacrifices ; idols representing 
gods, and of which some possessed a celestial vir- 
tue ; pontiffs devoted to the worship of each divi- 
nity, but without forming a political corps, and 
even without being united in a religious communi- 
on ; oracular powers attached to certain temples, 
residing in certain statues ; and lastly, mysteries 
which their hierophants never revealed without im- 
posing an inviolable law of secrecy. These were 
the features of resemblance; 

Let us add, that the priests, arbiters of the re- 
ligious conscience, had presumed to assert no claim 
upon the moral conscience ; that they directed the 
practice of worship, but not the actions of private 
life. They sold oracles and auguries to political 
powers; they could precipitate nations into war ; 
they could dictate to them crimes ; but they exer- 
cised no influence either over the government or 
the laws. 

When the different nations, subjects now of 
the same empire, enjoyed an habitual intercourse, 
and knowledge had every where made nearly an 
equal progress, it was soon discovered, by well-in- 
formed minds, that all this multifarious worship 
was that of one only God, of whom the numerous 
divinities, the immediate objects of popular ador- 
ation, were but the modifications or the ministei 

G2 



Meanwhile, among the Gauls, and in some 
cantons of the east, the Romans had found religi- 
ons of another kind. There the priests were the 
arbiters of morality ; and virtue consisted in obe- 
dience to a God, of whom they called themselves 
the sole interpreters. Their power extended over 
the whole man ; the temple and the country were 
confounded : without being previously an adorer 
of Jehova, or CEsus, it was impossible to be a ci- 
tizen or subject of the empire ; and the priests de- 
termined to what human laws their God exacted 
obedience. 

These religions were calculated to wound the 
pride of the masters of the world. That of the 
Gauls was too powerful for them not to seek im- 
mediately its destruction. The Jewish nation was 
even dispersed. But the vigilance of government 
either disdained, or else was unable to reach, the 
obscure sects that secretly formed themselves out 
of the wreck of the old system of worship. 

One of the benefits resulting from the propa- 
gation of the Greek philosophy, had been to put 
an end to a belief in the popular divinities in all 
classes of men who had received any tolerable ed- 
ucation.... A vague kind of deism, or the pure me- 
chanism of Epicurus, was, even at theaime of Cice- 
ro, the common doctrine of every enlightened mind., 
and of those who had the direction of public affairs* 
This class of men was necessarily attached to the 
old religion, which however it sought to purify from 
its dross ; for the multiplicity of Gods of every 
country had tired out even the credulity of the peo- 
ple. Then were seen philosophers forming sys- 
tems upon the idea of interposing genii, and sub- 
mitted to preparatory observances, rites, and a re- 
ligious discipline, to render themselves more wor- 
thy of approaching these superior essences ; and it 



Is 

he prin- 
ciples of this doctrine. 

The inhabitants of conquered D 
dren of misfortune, men of w 
imagination, wc em- 

selves to the sacerdotal religions ; because the in- 
terest of the ruling priests dictated to them that 
very doctrine of equality in slavery, of the 
ciation of temporal enjoyments, of rewards in hea- 
ven reserved for blind submission, for surferin 
for mortifications inflicted voluntarily, or endui 
without repining ; that doctrine so attractive, so 
consolatory to oppressed humanity i But they 
the necessity of relieving, by metaphisical subtle- 
ties, their gross mythology: and here again they 
had recourse to Plato. His dialogues were the ar- 
senal to which two opposite parties resorted to 
forge their theological arms. In the sequel 
shall see Aristotle obtaining a similar honor, and 
becoming at once the master of the theologians, 
and chief of the athiests. 

Twenty Egyptian and Jewish sects, united 
their forces against the religion of the empire, but 
contending against each other with equal fury, 
were lost at length in the religion of Jesus^ From 
their wreck were composed a history, a creed, a 
ritual, and a system cf morality, to which by de- 
grees the mass of these fanatics attached them- 
selves. 

They all believed in a Christ, a Messiah sent 
from God to restore the human race. This was 
the fundamental doctrine of every sect that attempt- 
ed to raise itself upon the ruins of the ancienl 
They disputed respecting the time and place of his 
appearance, and his mortal name : but a prophet, 
said to have started up in Palestine, in die reign, 
pf Tiberius, eclipsed all the other expect* 



m 

p|Kets, and the new fanatics rallied under the stan- 
dard of the Son of Mary. 

In proportion as the empire weakened the pro- 
gress of this religion of Christ became more rapid. 
The degraded state of the ancient conquerors of 
the world extended to their Gods, who, after pre^ 
siding in their victories, were no longer regarded- 
than as the impotent witnesses of their defeat...... 

The spirit of the new sect was better suited to pe- 
riods of decline and misfortune. Its chiefs, in 
spite of their impostures and their vices, were en- 
thusiasts ready to suffer death for their doctrine 

The religious zeal of the philosophers and of the 
great, was only a political devotion ; and every re- 
ligion which men permit themselves to defend as a 
creed useful to be left to the people, can expect no 
other fate than a dissolution more or less distant. 
Christianity soon became a powerful party y it mix- 
ed in the quarrels of the Caesars: it placed Con. 
stantine on the throne, where it afterwards seated, 
itself, by the side of his weak successors. 

In vain did one of those extraordinary men 
whom chance sometimes exalts to sovereign power, 
Julian, wish- to free the empire from this plague 
which was calculated to hasten its fall. His vir- 
tues, his indulgent humanity, the simplicity of his 
manners, the dignity of his soul and his character, 
his talents, his courage, his military genius, the 
splendor of his victories, every thing seemed to pre- 
mise him success. No other reproach could be 
cast upon him than that of showing for a religion, 
become ridiculous, an attachment unworthy of him 
if sincere, indiscreet from its extravagance if po^ 
litical : but he died in the midst of his glory, af- 
ter a reign of two years. The Colossus of the 
Roman Empire found its arms no longer suffici- 
ently strong to support the weight of. it-; and ti*e 



S7 

death of Julian broke clown the only mound that 
might yet have opposed itself against the torrent 
of new superstitions, aud the inundations of bar- 
bari ins. 

Contempt for human sciences was one of the 
features of Christianity. It had to avenge it- 
f of the outrages of philosophy ; it feared that 
spirit of investigation and doubt, that confidence 
of man in his own reason, the pest alike of all re- 
ligious creeds. The light of the natural sciences 
was even odious to it, and was regarded with a 
suspicious eye, as being a dangerous enemy to the 
success of miracles : and there is no religion tl 
does not oblige its • 

thus the signal of the entire decline both of the 
sciences and of philosopl 

Had the art of printing been known, the sci- 
ences would have been able to preserve th< 
ground ; but the existing manuscripts of any par- 
ticular book were few in number ; and to proci 
works that might form the entire body of a science, 
required cares, and often journies, raid an expei 
to which the rich only were competent. It \ 
sy for the ruling party to suppress the appearance 
of books which shocked its prejudices, 
ed its impostures. An incursion of barbari 
might, in one day, deprive. r, a whole cot 

try of the means of knowledge. The dest 
of a single manuscript was often an irreparable a 
universal loss. Besides, no works were coj 
but such as were recommended by the > ot 

the authors. All those investigations which can 
acquire importance only from their a 
those detached observations, those improvemc 
detail, that serve to keep the sci( 
channel^ and that pi 



88 

gress ; ail those materials which time amasses, arid 
which await the birth of genius, were condemned 
to an eternal obscurity. That concert of learned 
men, that combination of all their forces, so ad- 
vantageous, so indispensible at certain periods, 
had no existence. It was necessary for the same 
individual to begin and complete a discovery ; and 
he was obliged to combat, with his single strength, 
all the obstacles which nature opposes to our efforts.. 
The works which facilitate the study of the sci- 
ences, which throw light upon difficulties, which 
exhibit truths under more commodious and more 
simple forms, those details of observation, those 
developements which serve to detect erroneous in- 
ferences, and in which the reader frequently catch- 
es what the author himself has not perceived ; such 
works would find neither copyists nor readers. 

It was then impossible that the sciences, arriv- 
ed at a point in which the progress, and even th& 
study of them were still difficult, should be able to 
support themselves, and resist the current that bore 
them rapidly towards their decline. Accordingly 
it ought not to astonish us that Christianity, though 
unable in the sequel to prevent their re-appearance 
in splendor, after the invention of printing, was at 
this period sufficiently powerful to accomplish their 
ruin. 

If we except the dramatic art, w^hich flourished 
only in Athens, and must have been involved in 
her fall, and eloquence, which cannot breathe but 
in a free air, the language and literature of the 
Greeks preserved for a long time their lustre. Lu- 
cian and Plutarch would not disparage the age of 
Alexander. Rome, it is true, rose to a level with 
Greece in poetry, eloquence, history, and the art 
of treating with dignity, elegance and fascination^ 
the dry subjects of philosophy and the sciences.....*,. 



Greece indeed had no poet, that evinced so fully 
as Virgil, the idea of perfection, and no his- 
torian to be compared with Tacitus. But this in- 
stant of splendor was followed by a speedy decline. 
From the time of Lucian, Rome had scarcely any 
writers above barbarism. Chrysostom still speaks 
the language of Demosthenes. We recognize no 
longer that of Cicero or of Livy, either in Austin, 
or even in Jerome, who has to plead in his excuse 
the influence of African barbarity. 

The cause is, that at Rome the study of let- 
ters and love of the arts were never the real taste 
of the people ; that the transient perfection of its 
language was the work, not of the national genius, 
but of a few individuals whom Greece had been 
the instrument of forming. The cause is, that the 
Roman territory was always, as to letters, a fo- 
reign soil, to which an assiduous culture had been 
able to naturalize them, but where they must ne- 
cessarily degenerate the moment they were aban- 
doned to themselves. 

The importance so long affixed, in Greece and 
in Rome, to the tribune and the bar, increased in 
those countries the class of rhetoricians. Their 
labors have contributed to the progress of the art, 
of which they have developed the principles and 
subtleties. But they taught another art too much 
neglected by the moderns, and which at present it 
has been thought proper to transfer from speeches 
for the tribune, to compositions for the press : I 
mean that of preparing with facility, and in a short 
space of time, discourses, which, from the arrange- 
ment of their parts, from the method conspicuous 
in them, from the graces with which the\- may be 
embellished, shall at least become supportable : I 
mean the art of being able to speak almost instan- 
taneously, without fatiguing the auditors with a 



CO 

medley of ideas, or a diffuse style ; without dis- 
gusting them with idle declamation, quaint conceits, 
nonsense and fopperies. How useful would be this 
art in every country where the functions of office, 
public duty, or private interest may oblige men to 
speak and write, without having time to study their 
speeches or their compositions ? Its history is the 
more deserving our attention, as the moderns, to 
whom in the mean time it must be often necessary, 
appear only to have known it on the side of absurd- 
ity. 

From the commencement of the epoch of which 
I shall here terminate the delineation, manuscripts 
were tolerably numerous ; but time had spread 
over the performances of the first Greek writers a 
sufficient number of obscurities, for the study of 
books and opinions, known by the name of erudi- 
tion, to form an important portion of the occupati- 
ons of the mind ; and the Alexandrian library was 
crowded with grammarians and critics. 

In what has been transmitted to us of their pro- 
ductions, we perceive a propensity in these critics 
to proportion their degree of confidence and admi- 
ration of any book to its antiquity, and the difficul- 
ty of understanding and procuring it ; a dispositi- 
on to judge opinions not by themselves, not accord- 
ing to their merits, but from the names of their 
authors ; to found their belief on authority, rather 
than upon reason ; in short, that false and destruc- 
tive idea of the deterioration of the human race, 
and superiority of ancient periods. The solution 
and excuse of this error, an error in which the an- 
tiquarians of every country have had a greater or 
less share, are to be found in the importance which 
men affix to what has been the object of their atten- 
tion, and called forth the energies of their mind. 






The Greek and Roman antiquarians, and e\ en 
their literati and philosophers, are chargeable with 
a total neglect of that spirit of doubt which sub- 
jects to a rigorous investigation both facts, and the 
proofs that establish them. In reading their ac- 
counts of the history of events, or of manners, of 
the productions and phenomena of nature, or 
of the works and processes of the arts, we are a- 
stonished at the composure with which thev re- 
late the most palpable absurdities, and the most 
fulsome and disgusting prodigies. A hearsay 
or rumor which they found tacked to any event, 
was sufficient they conceived, to screen them from 
the censure of childish credulity. This indiffer- 
ence, which spoiled their study of history, and was an 
obstruction to their advancement in the knowledge 
of nature, is to be ascribed to the misfortune of 
the art of printing not being known. The certain- 
ty of our having collected, respecting any fact, all 
the authorities for and against it, a facility in com- 
paring the different testimonies, the opportunity of 
throwing light upon the subject by the discussions 
to which that difference may give rise, are means 
of ascertaining truth which can only exist when it 
is possible to procure a great number of books, 
when copies of them may be indefinitely multipli- 
ed, and when no fear is entertained of giving them 
too extensive a circulation. 

How were the relations and descriptions of tra- 
vellers, of which there frequently existed but a sin- 
gle copy, descriptions that were not subjected to 
public judgment, to acquire that stamp of authori- 
ty, founded upon the circumstance of such judg- 
ment not having, and not being able, to contradict 
them ? Accordingly, every thing was recorded 
alike, because it was impossible to ascertain with 

H 



9* 

any certainty what was deserving of record. But 
we can have no right to astonishment at this prac- 
tice of representing with equal confidence, and as 
founded upon equal authorities, facts the most na- 
tural, and miracles the most stupendous ; the same 
error is still inculcated in our schools as a princi- 
ple of philosophy, while in another sense, an over- 
weening incredulity leads us to reject without ex- 
amination whatever appears to us to be out of na- 
ture ; nor has the science in our days begun to ex- 
ist, that can alone teach us to find, between these 
two extremes, the point at which reason directs us 
to stop. 



93 



SIXTH EPOCH. 

DECLINE OF LEARNING, TO ITS RESTORATION A- 
BOUT THE PERIOD OF THE CRUSADES. 



I, 



.N the disastrous epoch at which we are now 
arrived, we shall see the human mind rapidly de- 
scending from the height to which it had raised it- 
self, while ignorance marches in triumph, carrying 
with her, in one place, barbarian ferocity ; in ano- 
ther, a more refined and accomplished cruelty ; 
every where, corruption and perfidy. A glim- 
mering of talents, some faint sparks of greatness 
or benevolence of soul, will, with difficulty, be 
discerned amidst the universal darkness. Theolo- 
gical reveries, superstitious delusions, are become 
the sole genius of man, religious intolerance his 
only morality ; and Europe, crushed between sa- 
cerdotal tyranny and military despotism, awaits, 
in blood and in tears, the moment when the revival 
of light shall restore it to liberty, to humanity and 
to virtue. 

We shall divide the picture into two distinct 
parts. / The first will embrace the west, where the 
decline was more rapid and more absolute, bur. 
where the light of reason is again to make its ap- 
pearance, never more to be extinguished. Tiie 
second will be confined to the east, where the de- 
cline was more slow, and, for along tim uni- 
versal, but when the day of reason l 1 
dawned, that shall enlighten it, and enable it tvo 

ak in pieces its chains. 



94 

Christian piety had scarcely overthrown the 
altars of victory, when the west became the prey 
of barbarians. They embraced the new religion, 
without adopting the language of the vanquished. 
This the priests alone preserved ; but, from their 
ignorance and contempt for human learning, they 
exhibited none of those appearances which might 
have been expected from a perusal of the Latin 
books, particularly when they only were capable of 
reading them. 

The illiterate character, and rude manners of 
the conquerors, are sufficiently known: meanwhile, ! 
it was in the midst of this ferocious stupidity that 
the destruction of domestic slavery took place ; a 
slavery that had disgraced the best days of Greece, 
when a country distinguished for learning and li- 
berty. 

The rural slaves, serfs of the glebe, cultivated 
the lands of the conquerors. By this oppressed 
class of men their houses were supplied with do- 
mestics, whose dependent situation answered all 
the purposes of their pride or their caprice. Ac- 
cordingly, the object of their wars was not slaves, 
but lands and colonies. 

Beside, the domestic slaves which they found 
in the countries they invaded, were in a great mea- 
sure either prisoners taken from some tribe of the 
victorious nation, or the children of those prison- 
ers. Many, at the moment of conquest, had fled 
or else joined themselves to the army of the con- 
querors. 

The principles of general fraternity, which 
constituted a part of the Christian morals, also con- 
demned slavery ; and, as the priests saw no poli- 
tical reason for contradicting, in this particular, 
maxims, that did honor to their cause, they con- 
tributed by their discourses, to a downfall which 



95 

otherwise events and manners would necessarily 
have ascomplished. 

This change has proved the generative princi- 
ple of a revolution in the destinies of mankind. 
To this men are indebted for the knowledge of 
true liberty. But its influence on the lot of indivi- 
duals was at first almost insensible. We should 
form a very false idea of domestic slavery as it ex^ 
isted at this period and among the ancients, if we 
compared it to that of our negroes. The Spartans, 
the grandees of Rome, and the Satraps of the east* 
were, no doubt, barbarous masters. Avarice dis- 
played all its brutality in the labors of the mines ; 
but, on the other hand, interest had almost every 
where softened the state of slavery in private fami- 
lies. The impunity granted for violences commit- 
ted against the rural slave, was carried to a high 

pitch, since the law had exactly fixed its price 

His dependence was as great as that of the domes- 
tic, without being compensated by the same atten- 
tions. He was less perpetually under the eye of 
his master ; but he was treated with a more lordly 
arrogance. The domestic was a slave whom for- 
tune had reduced to a condition, to which a simi- 
lar fortune might one day reduce his master. The 
rural slave, on the contrary, was considered as of 
a lower class, and in a state of degradation. 

It is principally, then, in its remote consequen- 
ces that we must consider this annihilation of d3- 
mestic slavery. 

These barbarian nations had all nearly the 
same form of government, consisting of a common 
chief, called king, who, with a council, pronoun 
ed judgments, and gave dicisions, that it would 
have been dangerous to delay ; of an assembly of 

ate chiefs, consulted upon all resolutions of 
112 





certain importance ; and lastly, of an assembly of 
the people, in which measures interesting to the 
general community were deliberated. The princi« 
pal difference was the greater or less degree of au- 
thority affixed to these three powers, which were 
not distinguished by the nature of their functions, 
but by the rank of affairs confided to them ; and, 
above all, by the value of that rank in the minds 
of the majority of the citizens. 

Among the agricultural tribes of these barbari- 
ans, and particularly those who had already fonn- 
cd an establishment on a foreign territory, these 
constitutions had assumed a more regular and more 
solid form, than among pastoral tribes. Hie in- 
dividuals of such tribes also were dispersed over 
the soil, and did not live, like the others, in en- 
campment more or less numerous. The king there- 
fore had not always an army assembled about his 
person ; and despotism could not so immediately 
follow upon conquest, as in the revolution of Asia. 

The victorious nation was thus enslaved. At 
the same time, these conquerors kept the towns> 
but without inhabiting them. As they were not 
held in awe by an armed force, no permanent force 
of that kind existing, they acquired a sort of pow- 
er ; and this power was a point of support for the 
liberty of the conquered nation. 

Italy was often invaded by the barbarians ; but 
they were able to form there no durable establish- 
ment, from its wealth continually exciting the ava- 
rice of new conquerors, and because the Greeks 
entertained the hope, for a considerable period, of 
uniting it to the empire. It was never, by any 
people, entirely or permanently subdued. The 
Latin language, which was there the only language 
of the people, degenerated more slowly; and ig- 
norance also was less complete, superstition less 
senseless, than in the other parts of the west- 



97 

Rome, which acknowledged masters only to 
change them, maintained a sort of independence. 
This city was the residence of the chief of the re- 
ligion, Accordingly, while in the east, subjeel 
to a single prince, the clergy, sometimes govern- 
ing, and sometimes conspiring against the err: 
rors, supported despotism, though resisting the 
despot, and preferred availing themselvs of the 
whole power of an absolute master, to jdispu 
part of it; we see them, on the contrary, in the 
w r est, united under a common head, erecting a 
power, the rival of that of kings, and forming in 
these divided states a sort of distinct and indepen- 
dent monarchy, 

We shall exhibit this ruling city trying die ex- 
periment upon the universe of a new species of 
chains ; its pontiffs subjugating ignorant creduli 
by acts grossly forged ; mixing religion with all the 
transactions of civil life, to render them more sub- 
servient to their avarice or their pride ; punishing 
by anathemas, from which the people shrunk with 
horror, the least opposition to their laws, the smal- 
lest resistance of their absurd pretensions ; ha\ 
an army of monks in every state, read}', by their 
impostures, to enhance the terrors of superstition, 
thereby to feed the flame of fanaticism ; depriving 
nations of their worship and ceremonies upon 
which depended their religious hopes, to kindle 
civil war ; disturbing all, to govern all ; command- 
ing in the name of God, treason and perfidy, as- 
sassination and parricide; making kings and v 
riors now the instruments, and now the victims of 
their revenge ; disposing of force, but ik N 
sessing it ; terrible to their enemies, but u\ 
before their own defenders ; on 
ry extremities of Europe, yet insu] 
nity at the foot their altars ; finding inl 



9 3 

ven the point upon which to fix the lever for mov- 
ing the world, but without discovering on earth the 
regulator that is to direct and continue its motion 
at their will ; in short, erecting a Colossus, but 
with legs of clay, that, after first oppressing Eu- 
rope, is afterwards to weary it, for a long peri- 
od, with the weight of its ruins and scattered frag- 
ments. 

Conquest had introduced into the west a tu- 
multuous anarchy, in which the people groaned 
under the triple tyranny of kings, leaders of ar- 
mies, and priests; but this anarchy carried, in its 
womb the seed of liberty. In this portion of Eu- 
rope must be comprehended the countries into 
which the Romans had not penetrated. Partaking 
of the general commotion, conquering and con- 
quered in turn, having the same origin, the same 
manners as the conquerors of the empire, these 
people were confounded with them in the com- 
mon mass. Their political state must have expe- 
rienced the same alterations, and followed a simi- 
lar route. 

We shall give a sketch of the revolutions of 
this feodal anarchy : a name that may furnish an 
idea of its character. 

Their legislation was incoherent and barbar- 
ous. If we find in its records many laws apparent- 
ly mild, this mildness was nothing else than an un- 
just and privileged impunity. Meanwhile we trace 
among them some institutions of a true temper, 
which, though as being intended to consecrate the 
rights of the oppressor, were an additional outrage 
to the rights of men, yet tended to preserve some 
feeble idea of these last, and were destined one 
day to serve as an index to their recognition and. 
restoration. 



59 

In this legislation two singular customs are ob- 
rvable, characteristic at once both of the infancy 

of nations, and the ignorance of the rude ages 

A criminal might purchase exemption from punish- 
ment by means of a sum of money fixed by law, 
which estimated the lives of men according to their 
dignity or their birth. Crimes were not consider- 
ed as a violation of the security and rights of citi- 
zens, which the dread of punishment was to pre- 
vent, but as an outrage committed on an individual, 
which himself or his family- might avenge, If they 
pleased, but of which the law offered, a more ad- 
vantageous reparation. -Men had so little notion 
of ascertaining the proofs by which a fact mi 
be substantiated, that it was thought a more sim 
mode of proceeding to request of Heaven a mira- 
cle, whenever the question was to discriminate be- 
tween guilt and innocence ; and the success of a 
superstitious experiment, or the chance event of a 
combat, were regarded as the surest means of de- 
tecting falshood and arriving at the truth. 

With men who made no distinction between 
independence and liberty, the quarrels arising a- 
mong those who ruled over a portion, however 
small, of the territory, must degenerate into pri- 

! wars ; and these wars extending from c 
to canton, from village to village, habitual 
vered up the whole surface of each cot 
those horrors which, even in great in\ 
but transient, and In general wars desolate only 
the frontiers. 

Whenever tyranny aims at reducing tl 
of a people to the will of 01 
prejudices and 
ed among th 
to compensate, by tl 

ority of 



100 

which,* one might suppose, cannot fail to belongs 
at all*times, to the majority of numbers. But the 
principal foundation of its hope, which however it 
can seldom attain, is that of establishing between 
the masters and slaves a real difference, which 
shall in a manner render nature herself an accom- 
plice in the guilt of political inequality* 

Such was, in remote periods, the art of the 
Eastern priests, who were at once kings, pontiffs, 
judges, astronomers, surveyors, artists and phy- 
sicians. But what they owed to the exclusive pos- 
session of intellectual powers, the grosser tyrants 
of our weak progenitors obtained by their institu- 
tions and their warUke habits. Clothed with an 
impenetrable armour, fighting only upon horses as 
invulnerable as themselves, acquiring, by dint of 
a long and painful discipline, the necessary strength 
and address for guiding and governing them, they 
might oppress with this impunity and murder with- 
out risk, an individual of the commonalty, too 
poor to purchase these expensive accoutrements, 
and whose youth, necessarily occupied by useful 
labors, could not have been devoted to military ex- 
.ercises. 

Thus the tyranny of the few acquired, by the 
practice of this mode of fighting, a real superiori- 
ty of force, which must have excluded all idea of 
resistance, and which rendered for a long time 
fruitless even the efforts of despair. Thus the 
equality of nature disappeared Before this factitious 
inequality of strength. 

The morality of this period, which it was the 
province of the priests alone to inculcate, compre- 
hended those universal principles which no sect has 
overlooked : but it gave birth to a multitude of du- 
ties purely religious, and of imaginary sins 

5 were more strongly enforced thau 



101 

those of nature ; and actions indifferent, lawful, 
and even virtuous, were censured and punished 
with greater severity than actual crimes. Mean- 
while a momentary repentance, consecrated by the 
absolution of a priest, opened the gates of heaven 
to the wicked ; and donations to the church, with 
the observance of certain practices flattering to its 
pride, sufficed to atone for a Life crowded with ini- 
quity, Nor-was this all : absolutions were formed 
into a regular tariff. Care was taken co include in 
the catalogue of sins, all the degrees of human in- 
firmity, from simple desires, from the most inno- 
cent indulgences of love, to the refinements and 

excesses of the most intemperate debauchery 

This was a frailty from which, it was well known, 
few were able to escape ; and was accordingly one 
of the most productive branches of the sacerdotal 
commerce. There was even a hell of a limited 
duration invented, which priests had the power of 
abridging, and from which they could grant dis- 
pensations ; a favor which they first obliged the 
living to purchase, and afterwards the relations or 
friends of the deceased. They s jld so much land 
in heaven for an equal quantity of land upon earth ; 
and they had the extreme modesty to ask nothing 
to boot. 

The manners of this epoch were unfortunately 
worthy of a system so pregnant with corruption, so 
rootedly depraved. Th :ir nature may be learned 
from the progress of this very system itself ; from 
the monks, sometimes iventing old miracles, some- 
times fabricating new ones, and nourishing with 
prodigies and fables the stupid ignorance of the 
people, whom tiicv i in order to rob them ; 

irom the doctors of the church, employing the lit- 
tle imagination they possessed in 5 their 
creed with farther absurdities, and ex j> if 



I02 

possible, those which had been transmitted to them ; 
from the priests, obliging princes to consign to the 
flames, not only the men who presumed either to 
doubt any of their dogmas, or investigate their 
impostures, or blush for their crimes, but those 
who should depart for an instant from their blind 
obedience ; and even theologists themselves, when 
they indulged in dreams different from those of the 
umpires of the church, enjoying most influence 
and controul. Such, at this period, are the only 
traits which the manners of the West of Europe 
can furnish to the picture of the human species. 

In the East, united, under a single despot, we 
shall observe a slower decline accompanying the 
gradual debility of the empire : the ignorance and 
depravity of every age advancing a few degrees a- 
bove the ignorance and depravity of the preceding 
one ; while riches diminish, the frontiers ally them- 
selves more frequent, and tyranny grows more das- 
tardly and more cruel. 

In following the history of this empire, in read- 
ing the books that each age has produced, the most 
superficial and least attentive observer cannot avoid 
being struck with the resemblance we have men- 
tioned. 

The people there indulged themselves more 
frequently in theological disputes. These accord- 
ingly occupy a more considerable portion of its his- 
tory, have a greater influence upon political events, 
and the dreams of priests acquire a subtlety which 
the jealousy of the West could as yet not attain.... 
Religious intolerance was equally oppressive in 
both quarters of Europe ; but, in the country we 
are considering, its aspect was less ferocious. 

Meanwhile the works of Photius evince that 
a taste for rational study was not extinct. A few 
emperors, princes, and even some female sove* 



103 

reigns, are found seeking laurels out of the boun- 
daries of theological controversy, and deigning to 
cultivate human learning. 

The Roman legislation was but slowly corrupt- 
ed by that mixture of bad laws which avarice and 
anny dictated to the emperors, or which super- 
stition extorted from their weakness. The Greek 
language lost its purity and character ; but it pre- 
served its richness, its forms and its grammar ; and 
the inhabitants of Constantinople could still read 

Homer and Sophocles, Thucydides and Plato 

Anthe mius explained the construction of the burn- 
ing glasses of Archimedes, which Proclus employ- 
ed with success in the defence of the capital. Up- 
on the fall of the empire, this city contained some 
literary characters, who took refuge in Italy, and 
whose learning was useful to the progress of know- 
ledge. Thus, even at this period, the east had 
not arrived at the last stage of ignorance ; but at 
the same time it furnished no hope of a revival of 
letters. It became the prey of barbarians ; the fee- 
ble remains of intellectual cultivation disappeared; 
and the genius of Greece still waits the hand of a 
deliverer. 

At the extremities of Asia, and upon the con- 
fines of Africa, there existed a people, who, from 
its local situation and its courage, escaped the con- 
quests of the Persians, of Alexander, and of die 
Romans. Of its numerous tribes, some derived 
their subsistence from agriculture, while others 
observed a pastoral life ; all pursued commerce, 
and some addicted themselves to robbery. Hav- 
ing a similarity of origin, of language and of reli- 
gious habits, they formed a great nation, the differ 
parts of which, however, were held together 
bv no political tie. Suddenly there started up 

I 



104 

among them a man of an ardent enthusiasm and 
most profound policy, born with the talents of a 
poet, as well as those of a warrior. This man 
conceived the bold project of uniting the Arabian 
tribes into one body, and he had the courage to ex- 
ecute it. To succeed in imposing a chief upon a 
nation hitherto invincible, he began with erecting 
upon the ruins of the ancient worship, a religion 
more refined. At once legislator, prophet, priest, 
judge, and general of the army, he was in posses- 
sion of all the means of subjugating the mind : 
and he knew how to employ them with address, 
but at the same time with comprehension and dig- 
nity.. 

He promulgated a mass of fables, which he 
pretended to have received from heaven ; but he 
also gained battles. Devotion and the pleasures of 
love divided his leisure. After enjoying for twen- 
ty years a power without bounds, and of which 
there exists no other example, he announced pub- 
licly, that, if he had committed any act of injus- 
tice, he was ready to make reparation. All were 
silent : one woman only had the boldness to claim 
a small sum of money. He died ; and the enthu- 
siam which he communicated to his people will 
be seen to change the face of three quarters of the 
globe. 

The manners of the Arabians were mild and 
dignified ; they admired and cultivated poetry : and 
when they reigned over the finest countries of 
Asia, and time had cooled the fever of fanaticism, 
a taste for literature and the sciences mixed with 
their zeal for the propagation of religion, and a- 
bated their ardour for conquests. 

They studied Aristotle, whose works they 
translated. They cultivated astronomy, optics, all 
the branches of medicine, and enriched the scien- 



105 

ces with some new truths. To them we owe the 
general application of algebra, which was confined 
among the Greeks to a single class of questions.... 
If the chimerical pursuit of a secret for the trans« 
mutation of metals, and a draught for the perpetu- 
ating of life degraded their chymical researches, 
they were the restorers, or more properly speaking 
the inventors, of this science, which had hitherto 
been confounded with medicine and the study of 
the processes of the arts. Among them it appear- 
ed for the first time in its simple form, a strict ana- 
lysis of bodies for the purpose of ascertaining their 
elements, a theory of the combinations of matter 
and the laws to which those combinations are sub- 
jectcxl. 

The sciences were free, and to that freedom 
owed their being able to revive some sparks of the 
Grecian genius ; but the people were subjected to 
the unmitigated despotism of religion. Accord- 
ingly this light shone for a few moments only to 
give place to a thicker darkness ; and these labors 
the Arabs would have been lost to the human race, 
if they had not served to prepare that more dura- 
ble restoration, of which the west will presently 
exhibit to us the picture. 

We thus see, for the second time, genius aban- 
doning nations whom it had enlightened ; but it 
was in this, as in the preceeding instance, from be- 
fore tyranny and superstition that it was obliged to 
^disappear. Born in Greece, by the side of liberty, 
it was neither able to arrest the fall of that country, 
nor defend reason against the prejudices of the 
people already degraded by slavery. Born 
the Arabs, in the midst of despotism, and as it 
were, in the cradle of a fanatical religion, it I 
only, like the generous and brilliant character of 
thai d a transient es 



ic6 

general laws of nature, that condemn to brutality 
and ignorance enslaved and superstitious nations, 

But this second example ought not to terrify 
us respecting the future ; it should operate only as 
a warning upon our contemporaries not to neglect 
any means of preserving and augmenting know- 
ledge, if they wish either to become or to remain 
free ; and to maintain their freedom, if they would 
not lose the advantages which knowledge has pro- 
cured them. 

To the account of the labours of the Arabs, I 
shall suggest the outlines of a sudden rise and pre- 
cipitate fall of the nation, which-, after reigning 
from the borders of the Atlantic ocean to the banks 
of the Indus, driven by the barbarians from the 
greater part of its conquests, retaining the rest on- 
ly to exhibit therein the shocking spectacle of a 
people degenerated to the lowest state of servitude, 
corruption and wretchedness, still occupies its an- 
cient country, where it has preserved its manners, 
its spirit and its character, and learned to regain 
and defend its former independence. 

I shall add that the religion of Mahomet, the 
most simple in its dogmas, the least absurd in its 
practices, above all others tolerant in its principles, 
seems to have condemned to an early slavery, to 
an incurable stupidity, all that vast portion of the 
earth in which it has extended its empire ; while 
we are about to see the genius of science and li- 
berty blaze forth anew under superstitions more ab- 
surd, and in the midst of the most barbarous in- 
tolerance. China exhibits a similar phenomenon, 
theugh the effects of his stupefying poison hi 
been less fatal 



loy 



SEVENTH EPOCH. 



FROM THE FIRST PROGRESS OF THE SCIEV 
ABOUT THE PERIOD OF THEIR REVIVAL IN 



ART OF PRINTING. 

VARIETY of circumstances have concur- 
red to restore by degrees that energy to the human 
mind, which from chains so degrading and so 
heavy, one might have supposed was crushed for- 
ever. 

The intolerance of priests, their eagerness to 
grasp at political power, their abominable avarice, 
their dissolute manners, rendered more disgusting 
by their hypocrisy, excited against them every ho- 
nest heart, every unbiassed understanding, and e- 
very courageous character. It was impossible not 
to be struck with the contradictions between their 
dogmas, maxims and conduct, and those of the 
evangelists, from which their faith and system of 
morals had originated, and which they had been 
unable totally to conceal from the knowledge of the 
people. . 

Accordingly, powerful outcries were raised 
against them. In the centre of France whole pro- 
vinces united for the adoption of a more simple 
doctrine, a purer system of Christianity, in which, 
subjected only to the worship of a single divini 

I c > 



io3 

man was permitted to judge from his own reason^ 
of what that divinity had condescended to reyeal in 
the books said to have emanated from him. 

Fanatic armies conducted by ambitious chiefs, 
laid waste the provinces. Executioners, under the 
guidance of legates and priests, put to death those 
whom the soldiers had spared. A tribunal of 
monks was established, with powers of condemn- 
ing to the stake whoever should be suspected of 
making use of his reason. 

Meanwhile they could not prevent a spirit of 
freedom and enquiry from making a silent and fur- 
tive progress. Crushed in one country, in which 
it had the temerity to shew itself, in which, more 
than once, intolerant hypocrisy kindled the moat 
sanguinary wars, it started up, or spread secretly 
m another. It is seen at every interval, till the pe- 
riod, when, aided by the invention of the press, k 
gained sufficient power to rescue a portion of Eu- 
rope from the yoke of the court of Rome. 

Even already there existed a class of men, who 
freed from the inglorious bondage of superstition, 
contented themselves with secretly indulging their 
contempt, or who at most went no farther than to 
cast upon it, fortuitously as it were, some traits of 
a ridicule, which was by so much the more striking 
on account of the uniform respect with which they 
took care to clothe it. The pleasantry of the wri- 
ter obtained favor for the boldnesses of his pen 

They were scattered with moderation through 
works destined for the amusement of men of rank 
or of letters, and which never reached the mass of 
the people ; for which reason they did not excite 
the resentment of the bigots. 

Frederic the second was suspected of being 
what our priests of the eighteenth century have 
since denominated a Qhijosopher* He was accused 



die Pope, before all the nations of Ell 

ing treated the religions of Moses, Jesus, and 
Mahomet, as political fables. To his chancellor, 
Pierre des Vigiies, was attributed the immagin; 
book of the Three Impostors, which nev r er h 
existence but in the calumnies of some, or the in- 
genious sportiveness of others, but of which 
very title announced the existence of an opini 
the natural result of an examination of these ti: 

ds, which, derived from the same source, 
were only a corruption of a less impure worship 

lerecl by the most remote naiions of antiqu 
to the universal soul of the world. 

Our collections lit ion al tales, and the De* 

eameron of Bocae e, are full of traits ch 
of this freedom of thou; lis contempt of pre- 

judices, this inclination to make them the sue; 
of secret and acrimonious derision. 

Thus we are furnished in this epoch, at 
and the same period, with tranquil satirists of all 
degrees of sunerstitiom and enthusiastical refoi 

Ox 7 

trs of its grossest abuses ; and the history of these 
obscure invectives, these protests in favor of the 
rights of reason, may be almost connected with that 
of the most modern disciples of the school of Al< 
andiia. 

We shall enquire if, when philosophical p:\ 
lyteism was attended with such peril, secret soci- 
eties were not formed, whose object was to per 
tuate, to spread silently and without risk, amc 
some disciples and adepts, a few simple trut 
ich might operate as a presei 

prejudices. 
We shall examine r we ought not to 

k in the number of such societies tha 
which popes and I 



no 

with such meanness, and destroyed with so much 
barbarity. 

Priests, either for self-defence, or to invent 
pretexts by which to cover their usurpation over the 
secular power, and to improve themselves in the 
art of forging passages of scripture, were under 

the necessity of applying themselves to study 

Kings, on the other hand, to conduct with less 
disadvantage this war, in which the claims are 
made to rest upon authority and precedent, patron- 
ized schools, that might furnish civilians, of whom 
they stood in need, to be on an equality with the 
enemy. 

In these disputes between the clergy and the 
governments, between the clergy of each country 
and the supreme head of the church, those of more 
honest minds, and of a more frank and liberal cha- 
racter, vindicated the cause of men against that of 
priests, the cause of the national clergy against 
the despotism of the foreign chief. They attack- 
ed abuses and usurpations, of which they attempt- 
ed to unveil the origin. To us this boldness scarce- 
ly appears at present superior to servile timidity ; 
we smile at seeing such a profusion of labor em- 
ployed to prove what good sense alone was compe- 
tent to have taught; but the truths to which I re- 
fer, at that time new, frequently decided the fate 
of a people : these men fought them with an inde- 
pendent mind ; they defended them with firmness ; 
and to their influence is it to be ascribed that hu- 
man reason began to recover the recollection of its 
rights and its liberty. 

In the quarrels that took place between the 
kings and the nobles, the kings secured the support 
of the principal towns, either by granting privile- 
ges, or by restoring some of the natural rights of 
man; they endeavored, by means of emancipate 



Ill 

©ns, to encrease the number of those who enjo 
the common right of citizens. And these men, 
re-born as it were to liberty, felt how much it be- 
hoved them, by the study of law and of history, 
to acquire a fund of information, an authority of 
opinion, that might serve to counterbalance the mi- 
litary power the feodal tyranny. 

The rivalship that existed between the empe- 
rors and the popes prevented Italy from unit- 
ing under a single master, and preserved th 
a great number of independent societies. In th 
petty states, it was necessary to add the power of 
persuasion to that of force, and to employ negocia- 
tion as often as arms : and as this political war 
founded, in reality, in a war of opinion, and as 
Italy had never absolutely lost its taste for study, 
this country may be considered, respecting Euro 
as a seedplot of knowledge, irreconcilable ind ; 
as yet, but which promised a speed}' and yigoro 
increase. 

In fine, hurried on by religious enthusiasm, the 
western nations engaged in the conquest or 
rendered holy, as it was said, by the miracles and 
death of Christ; and this zeal, at the same til 
that it was favorable to liberty, by weakening a 
impoverishing the nobles, extended the eoni 
of the people of Europe with the Arabians, aco 
nection which their mixtures with Spain had Lei 
formed, and their commerce with Pisa, Gen 
and Venice cemented./ Their language was studi- 

their books were read, part of th 
was acquired ; and if the Europeans did not s 
above the point in which the sciences ha< 
by the Arabians, they at least felt the 
rivaling them. 

These wars, undertal 

s, served to destro Btition. 



112 

tacle of such a multitude of religions excited au 
length in men of sense a total indifference for 
creeds, alike impotent in refining the passions, and 
curing the vices of mankind ; a uniform contempt 
for that attachment, equally sincere, equally obsti- 
nate, of sectaries, to opinions contradictory to each 
other. 

Republics were formed in Italy, of which 
some were imitations of the Greek republics, while 
others attempted to reconcile the servitude of a 
subject people with the liberty and democratic 
equality of a sovereign one. In Germany, in the 
north, some towns, obtaining almost entire inde- 
pendence, were governed by their own laws. In 
certain parts of Switzerland, the people threw off 

their chains both of feoclal and of royal power ... 

In almost all the great states imperfect constituti* 
ons sprung up, in which the authority of raising 
subsidies, and of making new laws, was divided 
sometimes between the king, the nobles, the clergy 
and the people, and sometimes between the king, 
the barons and the commons ; in which the people, 
though not yet exempt from a state of humiliation, 
were at least secure from oppression; in which all 
that truly composed a nation were admitted to the 
right of defending its interests, and of being heard 
by those who had the regulation of its destiny. In 
England a celebrated act, solemnly sworn by the 
king, and great men of the realm, secured the rights 
of the barons, and some of the rights of men. 

Other nations, provinces, and even cities, ob- 
tained also charters of a similar nature, but less 
celebrated, and not so strenuously defended. They 
are the origin of those declarations of rights, re- 
garded at present by every enlightened mind as 
the basis of liberty; and of which the ancients 
neither had or could have an idea, because their 



"3 

institutions were sullied by domestic slavery, be- 
cause with them the right of citizenship was here- 
ditary, or conferred by voluntary adoption, and be- 
cause they never arrived at the knowledge of rights 
which are inherent in the species, and belong with 
a strict equality to all mankind. 

In France, England, and other great nations, 
the people appeared desirous of resuming their 
true rights ; but blinded by the sense of oppression, 
rather than enlightened by reason, the only fruit of 
its efforts were outrages, that were soon expiated 
by acts of vengeance more barbarous, and parti- 
cularly more unjust, and pillages accompanied with 
greater misery than either. 

In England the principles of Wickliffe, the re- 
former, had given rise to one of these commoti- 
ons, carried on under the direction of some of his 
disciples, and which afforded a presage of attempts 
more systematic and better combined, that would 
be made by the people under other reformers, and 
in a more enlightened age. 

The discovery of a manuscript of the Justini- 
an code, produced the rival of the study of juris- 
prudence and legislation, • and served to render 
these less barbarous even among the people who 
knew how to derive profit from the discovery, 
without treating the code as of sacred obligation. 

The commerce of Pisa, Genoa, Florence, Ve- 
nice, some cities of Belgia, and free towns of 
.Germany, embraced the Mediterranean, the Bal- 
tic, and the coasts of the European ocean. The 
precious commodities of the Levant were sought 
by the merchants of those places in die ports of 
Egypt, and at the extremities of the Black sea. 

Polity, legislation, national economy, wer$ 
not yet converted into sciences: the princi 
them were neither enquired after, investigated, 



H4 

developed ; but as the mind began to be enlighten- 
ed by experience ; observations were collected 
tending to lead thereto, and men became versed 
in the interests that must cause the want of them to 
be felt. 

Aristotle was only known. at first by a trans- 
lation of his works made from the Arabic. His 
philosophy, persecuted in the beginning, soon gain- 
ed foot in all the schools. It introduced there 
no new light, but it gave more regularity, more 
method to that art of reasoning which theological 
disputes had called into existence. This scholastic 
discipline did not lead to the discovery of the 
truth; it did not even serve for the discussion 
and accurate valuation of its proofs, but it whetted 
the minds of men ; and the taste for subtle distinc- 
tions, the necessity of continually dividing and sub- 
dividing ideas, of seizing their nicest shades, and 
expressing them in new words, the apparatus which 
was in the first instance employed to embarrass 
one's enemy in a dispute or to escape from his 
toils, was the original source of that philosophical 
analysis to which we have since been so highly in- 
debted for our intellectual progress. 

To these disciplinarians we are indebted for 
the greater accuracy that may have been obtained 
respecting the Supreme Being and his attributes ; 
respecting the distinction between the first cause, 
and the universe which it is supposed to govern ; 
respecting the farther distinction between the mind 
and matter; respecting the different senses that 
may be affixed to the word liberty \ respecting the 
meaning of the word creation ; respecting the man- 
ner of distinguishing from each other the different 
operations of the human mind, and of classing the 
ideas it forms of objects and their properties. 



«5 

But this method could not fail to retard in the 
s-chools the advancement of the natural sciences.... 
Accordingly the whole picture of these sciences at 
this period will be found merely to comprehend a 
few anatomical researches ; some obscure produc- 
tions of chymistry, employed in the discovery of 
the grand secret alone ; a slight application to geo- 
metry and algebra, that fell short of the discove- 
ries of the Arabians, and did not even extend to 
a complete understanding of the works of the an- 
cients ; and lastly, some astronomical studies and 
calculations, confined to the formation and improve- 
ment of tables, and depraved by an absurd mixture 
of astrology Meanwhile the mechanical arts be- 
gan to approach the degree of perfection which they 
had preserved in Asia. In the southern countries 
of Europe the culture of silk was introduced ; 
windmills as well as paper-mills were established ; 
and the art of measuring time surpassed the 
bounds which it had acquired either among the 
Ancients or the Arabians. 

In short, two important discoveries characte- 
rise this epoch. The property possessed by the 
loadstone, of pointing always to the same quarter 
of the heavens, a property known to the Chinese, 
and employed by them in steering their vessels, 
was also observed in Europe. The compass came 
into use, an instrument which gave activity to com- 
merce, improved the art of navigation, suggested 
the idea of voyages to which we have since owed 
the knowledge of a new world, and enabled man 
to take a survey of the whole extent of the globe 
on which he is placed. A chymist, by mixing an 
inflammable matter with saltpetre, discovered the 
secret of that powder which has produced so unex- 

K 



n6 

pected a revolution in the art of war. Notwith- 
standing the terrible effect of fire arms, in dispers- 
ing an army, they have rendered war less mur- 
derous, and its combatants less brutal. Military 
expeditions are more expensive ; wealth can ba- 
lance force ; even the most warlike people feel the 
necessity of providing and securing the means of 
combatting, by the acquisition of the riches of 
commerce and the arts. Polished nations have no 
longer any thing to apprehend from the blind cou- 
rage of barbarian tribes. Great conquests, and 
the revolutions which follow, are become almost 
impossible. 

That superiority which an armour of iron, 
which the art of conducting a horse almost invul- 
nerable from his accoutrements,, of managing the 
lance, the club or the sword, gave the nobility over 
the people, is completely done away ; and the re- 
moval of this impediment to the liberty and real 
equality of mankind, is the result of an invention, 
that, on the first glance, seemed to threaten the 
total extirpation of the human race. 

In Italy, the language arrived almost at its per- 
fection about the fourteenth century.. The style of 
Dante is often grand, precise, energetic. Boccace 
is graceful, simple and elegant. The ingenious 
and tender Petrarch has not yet become obsolete. 
In this country, whose happy climate nearly re- 
sembles that of Greece, the models of antiquity 
were studied ; attempts were made to transfuse in- 
to the new language some of their beauties, and to 
produce new beauties of a similar stamp. Alrea- 
dy some productions gave reason to hope that 
roused by the view of ancient monuments, inspir- 
ed by those mute but eloquent lessons, genius was 
about, for the second time, to embellish the exist- 



ii7 

ence of man, and provide for him those pure 
pleasures, the enjoyment of which is free to all, 
and becomes greater in proportion as it is partici- 
pated. 

The rest of Europe followed at an humble dis- 
tance ; but a taste for letters and poetry began at 
least to give a polish to languages that were still in 
a state of almost barbarity. 

The same motives which had roused the minds 
of men from their long lethargy, must also have 
directed their exertions. Reason could not have 
been appealed to for the decision of questions, of 
which opposite interests had compelled the discus- 
sion. Religion, far from acknowledging its pow- 
er, boasted of having subjected and humbled it 

Politics considered as just what had been conse- 
crated by compact, by constant practice, and anci- 
ent customs.. 

No doubt was entertained that the rights of 
man were written in the book of nature, and that 
to consult any other would be to depart from and 
violate them. Meanwhile it was only in the sacred 
books, in respected authors, in the bulls of popes, 
in the rescripts of kings, in registers of old usa- 
ges, and in the annals of the church, that maxims 
or examples were sought from which to infer those 
rights, The business was never to examine the 
intrinsic merits of a principle, but to interpret, to 
appreciate, to support or to annul by other t 
those upon which it might be founded. A j 
position was not adopted because it was true, but 
because it was written in this or that book, and 
had been embraced in such a country and such an 
age. 

Thus the authority of men was every where 
substituted for that of reason: books were w 



more studied than nature, and the opinions of an- 
tiquity obtained the preferrence over the phenome- 
na of the universe. This bondage of the mind, in 
which men had not then the advantage of enligh- 
tened criticism, was still more detrimental to the 
progress of the human species, by corrupting the 
method of study, than by its immediate effects..... 

And the ancients were yet too far from being equal- 
led, to think of correcting or surpassing them. 

Manners preserved,, during this epoch, their 
corruption and ferocity ; religious intolerance was 
even more active ; and civil discords, and the in- 
cessant wars of a* crowd of petty sovereigns, suc- 
ceeded the invasions of the barbarians, and the pest 
still more fatal, of sanguinary feuds. The gallan- 
tly indeed of the ministers and the troubadours, 
the institution of orders of chivalry, professing ge- 
nerosity and frankness, devoting themselves to the 
maintenance of religion, the relief of the oppress- 
ed, and the service of the fair, were calculated to 
infuse into manners more mildness, decorum, and 
dignity. But the change, confined to courts and 
castles, reached not to the bulk of the people...... 

There resulted from it a little more equality among 
the nobles, less perfidy and cruelty in their relate 
ons with each other ; but their contempt for the 
people, the insolence of their tyranny, their auda- 
cious robberies, continued the same ; and nations, 
oppressed as before, were as before ignorant, bar- 
barous and corrupt. 

This poetical and military gallantry, this chi- 
valry, derived in great measure from the Arabi- 
ans, whose natural generosity long resisted in 
Spain superstition and despotism, had doubtless 
their use : they diffused the seeds of humanity, 
which were destined in happier periods to exhibit 



"9 

their fruit ; and it was the general character of this 
epoch, that it disposed the human mind for the re- 
volution which the discover)* of printing could not 
but introduce, and prepared the soil which the fol- 
lowing ages were to £€&&* with so rich and 
abundant an harvest. *^ 



so 



K 2 



120 ; 



EIGHTH EPOCH. 






FROM THE INVENTION QJ^RINTING TO THE PE- 
RIOD WHEN THE SCIENCES AND PHILOSOPHY 
THREW OFF THE YOKE OF AUTHORITY,, 

JL HOSE who have reflected but superficial- 
ly upon the march of the human mind in the dis- 
covery, whether of the truths of science, or of the 
processes of the arts, must be astonished that so 
long a. period should elapse between the knowledge 
of the art of taking impressions of drawings, and 
the discovery of that of printing characters. 

Some engravers of plates had doubtless con- 
ceived this idea of the application of their art ; but 
they were more struck with the difficulty of execut- 
ing it, than with the advantages of success : and it 
is fortunate that they did not comprehend it in all 
its extent ; since priests and kings would infallibly 
have united to stifle, from its birth, the enemy that 
was to unmask their hypocrisy, and hurl them from 
their thrones. 

The press multiplies indefinitely, and at a 
small expence, copies of any work. Those who 
can read are hencs enabled to furnish themselves 
with books suitable to their taste and their wants ; 
and this facility of exercising the talent of reading, 
has increased and propagated the desire of learn- 
ing it. 

These multiplied copies, spreading themselves 
with greater rapidity, facts and discoveries not only 



12 I 

acquire a more extensive publicity, but acquis 
also in a shorter space of time. Knowledge I 
become the object of an active and universal com- 
merce. 

Printers were obliged to seek manuscripts 
we seek at present works of extraordinary gen' 
What was read before by a few individuals only, 
might now be perused by a whole people, and strike 
almost at the same instant, every mem that under- 
stood the same language. 

The means are acquired of addressing remote 
and dispersed nations. A new species of tribune 
is established, from which are communicated im- 
pressions less lively, but at the same time more 
lid and profound ; from which is exercised over 
the passions an empire less tyrannical, but o 
reason a power more certain and durable ; wh 
all the advantage is on the side of truth, since what 
the art may lose in point of seduction, is more than 

counterbalanced by the illumination it conveys 

A public opinion is formed, powerful by the num- 
ber of those who share in it, energetic, because 
the motives that determine it, act upon all minds 
at once, though at considerable distances from each 
other. A tribunal is erected in favor of reason 
and justice, independent of all human power, from 
the penetration of which it is difficult to conceal 
any thing, from whose verdict there is no escape. 

New inventions, the histor/ of the first st 
in the road to a discovery, the labors that prepare 
the way for it, the views that suggest the i 
give rise merely to the wish of pursuing it, the 
communicating themselves with celerity, furni 
every individual with the united means which the 

its of all have been able to create, 

ears to have more than doubled its p 



122 

Every new error is resisted from its birth ; 
frequently attacked before it has disseminated it- 
self, it has not time to take root in the mind 

Those which, imbibed from infancy, are identified 
in a manner with the reason of every individual, 
and by the influence of hope or of terror endeared 
to the existence of weak understandings have been 
shaken, from this circumstance alone, that it is now 
impossible to prevent their discussion, impossible 
to conceal that they are capable of being examined 
and rejected, impossible they should withstand the 
progress of truths which, daily acquiring new light, 
must conclude at last with displaying all the absur- 
dity of such errors- 

It is to the press we owe the possibility of 
spreading those publications which the emergency 
of the moment, or the transient fluctuations of opi- 
nion, may require, and of interesting thereby in 
any question, treated in a single point of view, 
whole communities of men reading and understand- 
ing the same language. 

; All those means which render the progress of 
the human mind more easy, more rapid, more 
certain, are also the benefits of the press, f With- 
out the instrumentality of this art, such books could 
not have been multiplied as are adapted to every 
class of readers, and every degree of instruction. 
To the press we owe those continued discussions 
which alone can enlighten doubtful questions, and 
fix upon an immovable basis, truths too abstract, 

) subtile, too remote from the prejudices of the 
people or the common opinion of the learned, not 
to be soon forgotten and lost. To the press we 
owe those books purely elementary, dictionaries, 
works in which are collected, with all their details., 
a multitude of facts, observations and experiments, 
in which all their proofs are developed, all their 



^3 

difficulties investigated. To the press we o - 
those valuable compilations, containing sometimes 
all that has been discovered, written, thought, up- 
on a particular branch of science, and sometimes 
the result of the annual labors of all the literati of 
a country. To the press we owe those tables, those 
catalogues, those pictures of every kind, of which 
some exhibit a view of introductions which the 
mind could only have acquired by the most tedio 
operations ; others present at will the fact, the dis- 
covery, the number, the method, the object which 
we are desirous of ascertaining ; while others again 
furnish, in a more commodious form and a m 
arranged order, the materials from which 
may fas! new truths. 

To these benefits we shall have occasion to add 
others, when we proceed to analyse the effects that 
have arisen from the substitution of the vernacular 
tongue of each country, in the room of the almost 
exclusive application, which had preceded, so far 
as relates to the sciences, of one language, the com- 
mon medium of communication between the learn- 
ed of all nations. 

In short, is it not the press that has freed the 
instruction of the people from every political a 

nous chain ? In vain might either despotism 
invade our schools ; in vain might it attempt, 
rigid institutions, invariably to fix what truths si 
be preserved in them, what errors inculcated on 
mind ; in vain might chairs, consecrated to I 
moral instruction of the people, and the tuition of 
youth in philosophy and the sciences, be obliged to 
deliver no doctrines but such as are favora 
this double tyranny : the press can di 

ne time a pure and independent light. '1 
struction which is to be 

e and solitude, can never be univ 



124 

rupted : a single corner of the earth free to com- 
mit their leaves to the press, would be a sufficient 
security. How amidst that variety of productions, 
amidst that multitude of existing copies of the same 
book, amidst impressions continually renewed, will 
it be possible to shut so closely all the doors of truth, 
as to leave no opening, no crack or crevice by which 
it may enter ? If it was difficult even when the bu- 
siness was to destroy a few copies only of a manu- 
script, to prevent for ever its revival, when it was 
sufficient to proscribe a truth, or opinion, for a cer-* 
tain number of years to devote it to eternal oblivi- 
on, is not this difficulty now rendered impossible, 
when it would require a vigilance incessantly occu- 
pied, and an activity that should never slumber ? 
And even should success attend the superstition of 
those too palpable truths, that wound directly the 
interests of inquisitors, how are others to be pre- 
vented from penetrating and spreading, which in- 
clude those proscribed truths without suffering 
them to be perceived, which prepare the way, and 
must one day infallibly lead to them ? Could it be 
done without obliging the personages in question to 
throw off that mask of hypocrisy, the fall of which 
would prove no less fatal than truth itself to the 
reign of error ? We shall accordingly see reason 
triumphing over these vain efforts : we shall see 
her in this war, a war continually reviving, and fre- 
quently cruel, successful alike against violence and 
stratagem ; braving the flames, and resisting seduc- 
tion ; crushing in turn, under its mighty hand, 
both the fanatical hypocrisy which requires for its 
dogmas a sincere adoration, and the political hypo- 
crisy, imploring on its knees that it may be allow- 
ed to enjoy in peace the profit of errors in which, 
if you will take its word, it is no less advantageous^. 



to the people than to itself, that they should ior 
ev r er be plunged. 

The invention of the art of printing* nearly co- 
incides with two other events, of which one has 
exercised an immediate influence on the progress 
of knowledge, while the influence of the other on 
the destiny of the whole human species can never 
cease but with the species itself. 

I refer to the taking of Constantinople by the 
Turks, and the discovery both of the new world, 
and of the route which has opened to Europe a 
direct communication with the eastern pares of 
Africa and Asia. 

The Greek literati, flying from the sovereign- 
ty of the Tartars, sought an asylum in Italy 

They acquired the ability of reading, in their ori- 
ginal language, the poets, orators, historians, phi- 
losophers, and antiquarians of Greece. They fifst 
furnished manuscripts, and soon after editions of 
the works of these authors. The veneration of 
the studious was no longer confined to what th 
agreed in calling the doctrine of Aristotle. They 
studied this doctrine in his own writings. They 
ventured to investigate and opppose it. They con- 
trasted him with Plato : and it was advancing a 
step towards throwing off the yoke, to acknow- 
ledge in themselves the right of choosing a m&st 

The perusal of Euclid, Archimedes, Diphan- 
tus, and Aristotle's philosophical book upon ani- 
mals, rekindled the genius of natural philosophy 
and of gcometrv ; while the anti-christian opinions 
of philosopr ideas that were almost 

extinct of die ancient prerogatives of human rea- 
son. 

Intrepid individuals, instigated by the love ot 
glory and a passion for disc led 

for Eur bounds of t Tse, had exhi- 



126 

bitted a new heaven, and opened to its view an un- 
known earth. Gania had penetrated into India, 
after having pursued with indefatigable patience 
the immense extent of the African coasts ; while 
Columbus, consigning himself to the waves of the 
Atlantic ocean, had reached that country, hitherto 
unknown, extending from the west of Europe to 
the east of Asia. 

If this passion, whose restless activity, embrac- 
ing at that period every object, gave promise of 
advantages highly important to the progress of the 
human species, if a noble curiosity had animated 
the heroes of navigation, a mean and cruel avarice, 
a stupid and brutal fanaticism governed the kings 
and robbers who were to rerip the profits of their 
labour. The unfortunate beings who inhabited 
these new countries were not treated as men, be- 
cause they were not christians. This prejudice, 
more degrading to the tyrants than the victims, 
stifled all sense of remorse, and abandoned, with- 
out controul, to their inextinguishable thirst for 
gold and far blood, those greedy and unfeeling men 
that Europe disgorged from her bosom. The 
bones of five millions of human beings have co- 
vered the wretched countries to which the Spani- 
ards and Portuguese transported their avarice, 
their superstition, and their fury. These bones 
will plead to everlasting ages against the doctrine 
of the political utility of religions, which is still 
able to find its apologists in the world. 

It is in this epoch only the progress of the hu- 
man mind, that man has arrived at the knowledge 
of the globe which he inhabits ; that he has been 
able to study, in all its countries, the species to 
which he belongs, modified by the continued influ- 
ence of natural causes, or social institutions ; that 
be has had an opportunity of observing the produc- 



527 

,:3 of the earth, or of the sea, in all tempe 
tures and climates. And accordingly, among- the 
happv consequences of the discoveries in question, 
may be included the resources of every kind which 

)se productions afford to mankind, and which, so 
far from being exhausted, men have yet no idea 
of their extent ; the truths which the knowledge 
of those objects may have added to the sciences, er 
the long received errors that may thereby have 
been destroyed ; the commercial activity that has 
given new life to industry and navigation, and, by 
a necessary chain of connection, to all the arts and 
all the sciences : and lastly, the force that free na- 
tions have acquired from this activity by which to 
resist tyrants, and subjected nations to break their 
chains, and free themselves at least from feodal 
despotism. But these advantages will never ex- 
piate what the discoveries have cost to suffering 
humanity, till the moment when Europe, abjuring 
the sordid and oppressive system of commercial 
monopoly, shall acknowledge that men of other cli- 
mates, equals and brothers by the will of nature, 
have never been formed to nourish the pride and 
avarice of a few privileged nations ; till, better in- 
formed respecting its true interests, it shall invite 
all the people of the earth to participate in its in- 
dependence, its liberty, and its illumination. Un- 
fortunately, we have yet to learn whether this 
volution will be the honorable fruit of the advance- 
ment of philosophy, or only, as we have hitherto 
seen, the shameful consequence of national jealou- 
sy, and the enormous excesses of tyramr . 

Till the present epoch the crimes of the pri 
hood had escaped with impunity. The c 
oppressed humanity, of violated reason, ha 
stifled inflames and in blood. The spirit which dic- 

L 



128 

tated those cries was next extinct: but the silence 
occasioned by the operation of terror emboldened 
the priesthood to farther outrages. At last, the 
scandal of farming to the monks the privilege of 
selling in taverns and public places the expiation 
of sins, occasioned a new explosion. Luther, 
holding in one hand the sacred books, exposed with 
the other the right which the Pope had arrogated 
to himself of absolving crimes and selling pardons ; 
the insolent despotism which he exercised over the 
bishops, for a long time his equals ; the fraternal 
supper of the primitive christians, converted, un- 
der the name of mass, into a species of magical in- 
cantation and an object of commerce ; priests con- 
demned to the crime of irrevocable celibacy ; the 
same cruel and scandalous law extended to the monks 
and nuns with which pontifical ambition had inun- 
dated and polluted the church ; all the secrets of 
the laity consigned, by means of confession, to 
the intrigues and the passions of priests ; God him- 
self, in short, scarcely retaining a feeble share in the 
adorations bestowed in profusion upon bread, men, 
bones and statues. 

Luther announced to the astonished multitude, 
that these disgusting institutions formed no part of 
Christianity, but on the contrary were its corrupti- 
on and shame ; and that, to be faithful to the reli- 
gion of Jesus, it was first of all necessary to ab- 
jure that of his priests. He employed equally the 
arms of logic and erudition, and the no less pow- 
erful weapon of ridicule. He wrote at once in 
German and in Latin. It was no longer as in the 
clays of the Abigenses, or of John Huss, whose 
doctrine, unknown beyond the walls of their church- 
es, was so easily calumniated. The German books 
of the new apostles penetrated at the same time in- 
to every village of the empire, while their Latin 



129 

productions roused all Europe from the shameful 
sleep into which superstition had plunged it. Those 
whose reason had outstripped the reformers, hut 
whom fear had retained in silence ; those who 
were tormented with secret doubts, but which they 
trembled to avow even to their consciences ; those 
who, more simple, were unacquainted with all the 
extent of theological absurdities ; who, having 
never reflected upon questions of controversy, 
were astonished to learn that they had the power 
of chusing between different opinions ; entered 
eagerly into these discussions, upon which they 
conceived depended at once their temporal inte- 
rests and their eternal felicity. 

All the christian part of Europe, from Swe- 
den to Italy, and from Hungary to Spain, was in 
an instant covered with the partisans of the new 
doctrines ; and the reformation would have deliver- 
ed from the yoke of Rome all the nations that in- 
habited it, if the mistaken policy of certain prin- 
ces had not relieved that very sacerdotal sceptre 
which had so frequently fallen upon the heads of 
kings. 

This policy, which their successors unhappily 
have yet not abjured, was to ruin their states by 
seeking to add to them, and to measure their power 
by the extent of their territory, rather than by the 
number of their subjects. 

Thus, Charles the fifth and Francis the first, 

while contending for Italy, sacrificed to the inter 

of keepiq; well with th that sup 

rest of profiting by the advantages offered by the 

reformation to every country that should h 

wisdom to adont it. 
i 

Perceiving that tire princes of the em 
were favorable to opinions calculated t 
their power and their wealth, die empei 



130 






the partisan and supporter of the old abase 
tuated by the hope that a religious war would fur- 
nish an opportunity of invading their states, and de- 
stroying their independence ; while Francis ima« 
gined that, by burning the protestants, and pro- 
tecting at the same time their leaders in Germany, 
he should preserve the friendship of the pope, 
without losing his valuable allies. 

But this was not their only motive. Despo- 
il sin has also its instinct ; and that instinct sug- 
gested to these kings, that men, after subjecting 
religious prejudices to the examination of reason, 
would soon extend their enquiries to prejudices of 
another sort : that, enlightened upon the usurpati- 
on of popes, the}' might wish at last to be equally en- 
lightened upon those of princes ; and that the re- 
form of ecclesiastical abuses, beneficial as it was 
to royal power, might involve the reform of abu* 
ses, still more oppressive, upon which that power 
was founded. Accordingly, no king of any con** 
siderable nation favored voluntarily the party of 
the reformers- Henry the eighth, terrified at the 
pontifical anathema, joined in the persecution a« 
gainst them, Edward and Elizabeth, unable to 
embrace popery without pronouncing themselves 
usurpers, established in England the faith and wor- 
ship that approached nearest to it, The protest- 
ant monarchs of Great Britain have indeed uni- 
formly favoured the catholic religion, whenever it 
has ceased to threaten them with a pretender to the 
crown. 

In Sweden and Denmark, the establishment of 
the religion of Luther was considered by their 
kings only as a necessary precaution to secure the 
expulsion of the catholic tyrant, to whose despo- 
tism they succeeded ; and in the Prussian monar- 
chy, founded by a philosophical prince, we already 



i3i 

perceive his successor unable to disguise his se- 
cret attachment to this religion, so dear to the 
hearts of sovereigns. 

Religious intolerance was common to every 
sect, and communicated itself to all the govern- 
ments. The papists persecuted the reformed com- 
munions ; while these, pronouncing anathema; 
against each other, joined at the same time against 
the anti-trinitarians, who, more consistent in their 
conduct, had tried every doctrine, if not by the 
touchstone of reason, at least by that of an en- 
lightened criticism, and who did not see the ne- 
cessity of freeing themselves from one species of 
absurdity, to fall into others equally disgusting. 

This intolerance served the cause of popery. 
For a long time there had existed in Europe, and 
especially in Italy, a class of men who, rejecting 
every kind of superstition, indifferent alike to all 
modes of worship, governed only by reason, re- 
garded religion as of human invention, at which 
one might laugh in secret, but towards which pru- 
dence and policy dictated an outward respect. 

This free-thinking assumed afterwards supe- 
rior courage ; and, while in the schools the philo- 
sophy of Aristotle, imperfectly understood, had 
been employed to improve the subtleties of theolo- 
gy, and render ingenious what would naturally 
have borne the features of absurdity, some men of 
learning established upon his true doctrines a sys- 
tem destructive of every religious idea, in which 
the human soul was considered only as a faculty 
that vanished with life, and in which no other pro- 
vidence, no other ruler of the world was admitted 
than the necessary laws of nature. This system 
was combatted by the Platonists, whose sentiments 
ues enabling what has since been called by the name 

L 2 



3TJ2 

of deism, were more terrifying still to sacerdotal 
orthodoxy. 

But the operation of punishment soon put a 
stop to this impolitic boldness. Italy and France 
were polluted with the blood of these martyrs to 
the freedom of thought. All sects, all govern- 
ments, every species of authority, inimical as they 
were to each other in every point else, seemed to 
be of accord in granting no quarter to the exercise 
of reason. It was necessary to cover it with a veil, 
which, hiding it from the observation of tyrants 
might still permit It to be seen by the eye of philo* 
sophy. 

Accordingly the most timid caution was ob- 
served respecting this secret doctrine, which had 
never failed of numerous adherents. It had been 
particularly propagated among the heads of govern- 
ments, as well as among those of the church ; and, 
about the period of the reformation, the principles 
of religious Machiavelism became the only creed 
of princes, of ministers, and of pontiffs. These 
opinions had even corrupted philosophy. What 
code of morals indeed w T as to be expected from a 
system of which one of the principles is, that it is 
necessary to support the morality of the people by 
false pretences ; that men of enlightened minds 
have a right to deceive them, provided they im- 
pose only useful truths, and to retain them in 
chains from which they have themselves contrived 
to escape. 

If the natural equality of mankind, the princi- 
pal basis of its rights, be the foundation of ail ge- 
nuine morality, what could it hope from a philoso- 
phv, of which an open contempt of this equality 
and these rights is a distinguishing feature ? This 
same philosophy has contributed no doubt to the 

,,n xment of reason, whose reign it silently pre- 



ct ; but so long as i 

sole effect was to si in the 

place of fanaticism, and to corrupt, at the sa 
time that it raised above prejudices, those -. 
presided in the d ; 

Philosophi 
ambition, who contented themseh 
ceivlng men gradually and with caution, but with- 
out suffering themselves at the same time to con- 
firm them in their errors, these philosophers wc 
naturally have been inclined to embrace the refor- 
mation : but, deterred by the intolerance that e 
ly where displayed itself the majority were of opi- 
nion that they ought not to expose themselves to 
the inconveniences of change, when by so doing, 

they would still be subjected to similar restraint 

As they must have continued to shew a respect for 
absurdities which they had already rejected, they 
saw no mighty advantage in having the number 
somewhat diminished ; they were fearful also of 
exposing themselves, by their abjuration, to the 
appearance of a voluntary hypocrisy ; and thus, by 
persevering in their attachment to the old religion, 
they strengthened it with the authority of their re- 
putation. 

The spirit which animated the reformers did 
not introduce a real freedom of sentiment, E 
religion, in the country in which it prevailed, . 
no indulgence but for certain opinions. Meanwhile 
as the different creeds were opposed to each oil 
few opinions existed that had not been attacked 
supported in some part of Europe. The new com- 
munions had beside been obliged to relax a lit- 
tle from their dogmatical rigour. They could not 
without the grossest contradiction, i 
right of examination within the pa ir own 

irch, since upontHo rig! led the l< 



IJ4 

timacy of their separation. If they refused to re* 
store to reason its full liberty, they at least consent- 
ed that its prison should be less confined : the chains 
were not broken, but they were rendered less bur- 
thensome and more permanent. In short, in those 
countries where a single religion had found it im- 
practicable to oppress all the others, there was es- 
tablished what the insolence of the ruling sect call- 
ed by the name of toleration, that is, a permission, 
granted by some men to other men, to believe 
what their reason adopts, to do what their consci- 
ence dictates to them, to pay to their common God 
the homage they think best calculated to please 
him: and in these countries the tolerated doctrines 
might then be vindicated with more or less free* 
dom. 

We thus see making its appearance in Europe 
a sort of freedom of thought, not for men, but for 
christians; and, if we except France, for christi- 
ans only does it any where exist to this day. 

But this intolerance obliged human reason to 
seek the recovery of rights too long forgotten, or 
which rather had never been properly known and 
understood. 

Ashamed at seeing the people oppressed, in 
the very sanctuary of their conscience, by kings, 
the superstitious or political slaves of the priest* 
hood, some generous individuals dared at length 
to investigate the foundations of their power ; and 
they revealed this grand truth to the world: that 
liberty is a blessing which cannot be alienated ; that 
no title, no convention in favor of tyranny, can 
bind a nation to a particular family ; that magis- 
trates, whatever may be their appellation, their 
functions, or their power, are the agents, not the 
masters, of the people ; that the people have the 
right of withdrawing an authority originating in 



1 OJ 

e, whenever that authority shrill be 
. or shall cease to 'be thought useful to t 
rests of the community: raid lastly, that th 
* the right to punish, as well as to cashier their 
.ants. 

the opinions which ius and 

afterwards Needham and Harring- 

>fessed, and investigated thoroughly. 

Fr< e to tlie age in which they lived, 

o often build upon texts, authorities, and 

inions appear to have been 

f the st >f their minds, and dig- 

of the' ters, rather than of an accurate 

! of the true principles of social order. 

le ether philosophers, more timid, 
contented themselves with establishing, between 
the | kings, an exact recipi F duties 

obligation to - e invi- 

ns. An hereditary magis- 

indeed be deposed or punished, but it 

3n his having infringed this sacred con- 

hich was not the less binding on his family. 

3 doctrine, which sacrificed natur; 

thing under positive instituti 
supported both by civilians and divines. It was 
ul men, and to the projects of 
ibitious, as it struck rather at the 

nd adopted 
a principle in political di >ns and re 

History c 
towards liberty duri 

tronger and part more just sense oi 

■i rhts. Laws are better c 



i 3 6 

pear less frequently to be the immature and shape-* 
less production of circumstances and caprice ; they 
are the offspring of men of learning, if they can- 
not be said as yet to be the children of philoso- 
phy. 

The popular commotions and revolutions which 

agitated England, France and the republics of Ita- 
ly, attracted the notice of philosophers to that 
branch of politics which consists in observing and 
predicting the effects that the constitution, laws 
and establishments of a country are likely to pro- 
duce upon the liberty of the people, and the pros- 
perity, strength, independence, and form of go- 
vernment of the state. Some, in imitation of Pla- 
to, as More, for instance, and Hobbes, deduced 
from general positions the plan of an entire system 
of social order, and exhibited the model towards 
which it was necessary in practice continually to 
approach. Others like Machiavel, sought in a 
profound investigation of historical facts, the rules 
by which were to be obtained the future mastery 
of nations.. 

The science of political economy did not, in 
this epoch, exist. Princes estimated not the num- 
ber of men,, but of soldiers, in the state ; finance 
was the mere art of plundering the people, without 
driving them to the desperation that should end in 
revolt ; and governments paid no other attention 
to commerce but that of loading it with taxes, of 
restricting it by privileges, or of disputing for its 
monopoly. 

The nations of Europe, occupied by the com- 
mon interests that should unite, or the opposite 
ones that they conceived ought to divide them, felt 
the necessity of observing certain rule's of conduct 
which, independently of treaties, were to operate 
in their pacific intercourse: while other rules, re- 



*37 

.spected even in the midst of war, were calculated 
to soften its ferocity, to diminish its ravages, and 
to prevent at least unproductive and unnecessary 
calamities. I refer to the science of the law of 
nations : but these laws unfortunately were sought, 
not in reason and nature, the only authorities that 
independent nations may acknowledge, but in e 
blished usages and opinions of antiquity. The 
rights of humanity, justice towards individuals, 
were less consulted, in this business, than the am- 
bition, the pride, and the avarice of government. 

In this epoch we do not observe moralists in- 
terrogating the heart of man, analysing his facili- 
ties and his feelings, thereby to discover his nature, 
and the origin, law and sanction of his duties. On 
the contrary, we see them employing all the sub- 
tlety of the schools to discover, respecting actions 
the lawfulness of which is uncertain, the precise 
limit where innocence ends, and sin is to begin; 
to ascertain what authoi ity has the proper degree 
of weight to justify the practice of any of these du- 
bious sort of actions ; to assist them in classing 
sins methodically, sometimes in genus and species, 
and sometimes according to the respective heinous- 
ness of their nature ; and lastly, to mark those in 
particular of which the commission of one only is 
Zient to merit eternal damnation. 

The science of morals, it is apparent, could 
not at that time have being, since priests alone en- 
joyed the privilege of being interpreters and judg- 
es. Meanwhile, as a skillful mechanic, by study- 
ing an uncouth machine, frequently derives from 
it the idea of a new one, less imperfect, ami truly 
useful; so did the:- ubtleties lead to the 

covery, or assist in ascertaining the degree of mo- 
ral turpitude of actions or i 
and limits of our duties, as well as the principles 



*3$ 

that should determine our choice whenever these 
duties shall appear to clash. 

The reformation, by destroying, in the coun- 
tries in which it was embraced, confession, indul- 
gences, and monks, refined the principles of mora- 
lity, and rendered even manners less corrupt, it 
freed them from sacerdotal expiations, that danger- 
ous encouragement to vice, and from religious ce- 
libacy, the bane of every virtue, because the ene- 
my of domestic virtues. 

This epoch, more than all the rest, was blotted 
and disfigured with acts of attrocious cruelty. It 
was the epoch of religious massacres, holy wars, 
and the depopulation of the new world. There 
we see established, the slavery of ancient periods, 
but a slavery more barbarous, more productive of 
crimes against nature : and that mercantile avidity, 
trafficking with the blood of men, selling them like 
other commodities, having first purchased them by 
treason, robbery or murder, and dragging them 
from one hemisphere to be devoted in another a- 
midst humiliation and outrages, to the tedious pu- 
nishment of a lingering, a cruel, but infallible de- 
struction. 

At the same time hypocrisy covers Europe 

with executions at the stake, and assassinations 

The monster, lanatacism, maddened by the wounds 
it had received, appears to redouble its fury, and 
hastens to burn its victims in heaps, fearful that 
ica hi be approaching to deliver them from 

eanwhile we may observe some of those 
mild but intrepid virtues making their appearance, 
which are the honor and consolation of humanity. 
History furnishes names which may be pronounced 
without a blush. A few unsullied and mighty 
minds, uniting superior talents to the dignity of 



their characters, relieve, here and there, these 
scenes of perfidy, of corruption, and of carnage. 
The picture of the human race is still too dre; 
for the philosopher to contemplate it without ex- 
treme mortification ; but he no longer despairs, 
since the dawn of brighter hopes is exhibited to 
his view. 

The march of the sciences is rapid and brilli- 
ant. The Algebraic language becomes generaliz- 
ed, simplified anc} perfected, or rather it is now 
only that it was truely formed. The first founda- 
tions of the general theory of equations are laid, 
the nature of the solutions which they give is as- 
certained, and those of the third and fourth de- 
gree are resolved. 

The ingenious invention of logarithms, as 
abridging the operations of arithmetic, facilitates 
the application of calculation to the various objects 
of nature and art, and thus extends the sphere of 
all those sciences in which a numerical process is 
one of the means of comparing the results of an 
hypothesis or theory with the actual phenomena, 
and thus arriving at a distinct knowledge of the 
laws of nature. In mathematics, in particular, 
the mere length and complication of the numerical 
process practically considered, bring us, upon cer- 
tain occasions, to a term beyond which neither 
time, opportunity, nor even the stretch of our fa- 
caulties, can carry us ; this term, had it not been 
for the happy intervention of logarithms, would 
have also been the term beyond which science 
could never pass, or the efforts of the proudest 
nius proceed. 

The law of the descent of bodies was disco- 
vered by Galileo, from which he had the ingenuity 
to deduce the theory of motion uniformly ace 

M 



140 

rated, and to calculate the curve described by a 
body impelled into the air with a given velocity, 
and animated by a force constantly acting upon it 
in parallel directions. 

Copernicus revived the true system of the 
world, so long buried in oblivion, destroyed, by 
the theory of apparent motions, what the senses 
had found so much difficulty in reconciling, and 
opposed the extreme simplicity of the real motions 
resulting from this system, to the complication, 
bordering upon absurdity, of the Ptolemean hypo- 
thesis'. The motions of the planets were better 
understood ; and by the genius of Kepler were dis- 
covered the forms of their orbits, and the eternal 
laws by which those orbits perform their evolutions. 

Galileo, applying to the astronomy the recent 
discovery of telescopes, which he carried to great- 
er perfection, opened to the yiew of mankind a 
new firmament. The spots which he observed on 
the disk of the sun led him to the knowledge of its 
rotation, of which he ascertained the precise peri- 
od, and the laws by which it was performed. He 
demonstrated the phases of Venus, and discover- 
ed the four satellites that surround and accompan 
Jupiter in his immense orbit. 

He also furnished an accurate mode of meas 
ing time, by the vibrations of a pendulum. 

Thus man owes to Galileo the first mathemati 
cal theory of a motion that is not at once uniform 
and rectilinear, as well as one of the mechanical 
laws of nature ; while to Kepler he is indebted for 
the acquisition of one of those empirical laws, the 
discovery of which has the double advantage of 
leading to the knowledge of the mechanical law of 
which they express the result, and of • supplying 
such degrees of this knowledge as man finds him- 
self yet incapable of attaining. 



my 



*4I 

The discovery of the weight of the air, and 
the circulation of the blood, distinguish the pro- 
gress of experimental philosophy, born in the 
school of Galileo, and of anatomy, already too far 
advanced not to form a science distinct from that 
of medicine. 

Natural history, and chymistry, in spite of 
its chimerical hopes and its enigmatical language, 
as well as medicine and surgery, astonish us by the 
rapidity of their progress, though we are frequent- 
ly mortified at the sight of the monstrous prejudi- 
ces which these sciences still retain. 

Without mentioning the works of Gesner 
and Agricola containing such a fund of real infor- 
mation, with so slight a mixture of scientific or 
popular errors, we observe Bernard de Palissi 
sometimes displaying to us the quarries from which 
we derive die materials of our edifices : sometimes 
masses of stone that compose our mountains form- 
ed from the skeletons of sea animals, and authen- 
tic monuments of the ancient revolutions of the 
globe ; and sometimes explaining how the waters, 
raised from the sea by evaporation, restored to the 
earth by rain, stopped by beds of clay, assembled 
in snow upon the hills, supply the eternal streams 
of rivers, brooks and fountains : while John Rei 
discovered those combinations cf air with metallic 
substances, which gave birth to the brilliant theo- 
ries by which within a few years, the bounds of 
of chymistry have been so much extended. 

In Italy the arts of epic poetry, painting and 
sculpture, i on unknown to 

ancients. In France, Corneille evinced tl 
dramatic art was about to acquire a still nobler < 
vation ; for whatever superiority the enthusiastical 
admirers of antiquity may sup] xhaps wi 

justice, the chefs-d'eeuvres of its ii 
posess, it is by no , by cpmpari 



I 4 2 

their works with the productions of France and of 
Italy, for a rational enquirer to perceive the real 
progress which the art itself has attained in the 
hands of the moderns. 

The Italian language was completely formed, 
and in those of other nations we see the marks of 
their ancient barbarism continually disappearing. 

Men began to feel the utility of metaphysics 
and grammar, and of acquiring the art of analys- 
ing and explaining philosophically both the rules 
and the processes established by custom in the 
composition of words and phrases. 

We every where perceive, during this epoch, 
reason and authority striving for the mastery, a 
contest that prepared and gave promise of the tri- 
umph Qz the former. 

This also was the period auspicious to the birth 
of that spirit of criticism which alone can render 
erudition truly productive. It was still necessary 
to examine what had been done by the ancients ; 
but men -were aware that, however they might ad- 
mire, they were entitled to judge them. Reason, 
which sometimes supported itself upon authority, 
and against which authority had been so frequent- 
ly employed, was desirous of appreciating the va- 
lue of the assistance she might derive therefrom, 
as well as the motive of the sacrifice that was de- 
manded of her. Those who assumed authority 
for the basis of their opinions, and the guide of 
their conduct, felt how important it was that they 
should be sure of the strength of their arms, and 
not expose themselves to the danger of having tht m 
broken to pieces upon the first attack of reason. 

The habit of writing only in Latin upon the 
: ciences, philosophy, jurisprudence, and even histo- 
ry, with a few exceptions, gradually yielded to the 
employing the common language of 



I 



H3 

respective country. And here we may examine 
what influence upon the progress of the human 
mind was produced by this change, which render- 
ed the sciences more popular, but diminished the 
facility with which the learned were able to follow 
them in their route; which caused a book to be 
read by more individuals of inferior information 
in a particular country, but by fewer enlightened 
minds through Europe in general ; which superse- 
ded the necessity of learning Latin in a great num- 
ber of men desirous of instruction, without having 
the leisure or the means of sounding the depths of 
erudition, but at the same time obliged the philo- 
sopher to consume more time in acquiring a know- 
ledge of different languages. 

We may show that, as it was impossible to 
make the Latin a vulgar tongue common to all Eu- 
rope, the continuance of the custom of writing in 
it upon the sciences would have been attended with 
a transient advantage only to those who studied 
them ; that the existence of a sort of scientific lan- 
guage among the learned of all nations, while the 
people of each individual nation spoke a different 
one, would have divided men into two classes, 
would have perpetuated in the people prejudices 
and errors, would have placed an insurmountable 
impediment to true equality, to an equal use of the 
same reason, to an equal knowledge of necessary 
truths ; and thus by stopping the progress of the 
mass of mankind, would have ended at last, as in 
the East, by putting a period to the advancement of 
the sciences themselves. . 

For a long time there had been no instruction 
but in churches and cloisters. 

The universities were still under the domina- 
tion of the priests. Compelled to resign to the ci- 
vil authority a part of their influence, thev retain- 

M > 



144 

ed it without the smallest defalcation, so far as 
lated to the early instruction of youth, that in- 
struction which is equally sought in all professions^ 
and amongst all classes of mankind. Thus they 
possessed themselves of the soft and flexible mind 
of the child, of the boy, and directed at their plea* 
sure the first unfinished thoughts of man. To the 
secular power they left the superintendence of those 
studies which had for their object jurisprudence, 
medicine, scientincai analysis, literature and the 
humanities, the schools of w r hich were less numer- 
ous, and. received no pupils who were not already 
broken to the sacerdotal yoke. 

In reformed countries the clergy lost this influ- 
ence. The common instruction, however, though 
dependent on the government, did not cease to be 
directed by a theological spirit : but it was no lon- 
ger confined to members of the priesthood. It 
still corrupted the minds of men by religious preju- 
dices, but it did not bend them to the yoke of sa- 
cerdotal authority ; it still made fanatics, visional 
ries, sophists, but it no longer formed slaves for 
superstition. 

Meanwhile education, being everywhere sub.s» 
jugated had corrupted every where the general un* 
derstanding, by clogging the reason of children 
with the weight of the religious prejudices of their 
country, and by stilling in youth, destined to a su- 
perior course of instruction, the spirit of liberty by 
means of political prejudices. 

Left to himself, every man not only found be- 
tween him and truth a close and terrible phalanx of 
the errors of his country and age, but the most 
dangerous of those errors were in a manner alrea- 
dy rendered personal to him. Before he could dis- 
sipate the errors of another, it was necessary he 
should begin with ascertaining his own ; before he 



•batted tl .3 opposed \y 

discovery of truth, his understanding, so to 

i obliged to undergo a thorough repair. Instruc- 
tion at this period a I some knowledg 

to render it useful, the operation of refining m 
take it from the dross in whi 

superstition and tyranny together had contrived to 

bury it. 

We may show what obstacles, more or I 
powerful, these vices of education, those religious 
and contradictory creeds, that influence of the dif- 
ferent forms of government, opposeel to the pro* 

ss of the human mind. It will be seen that this 
progress was by so much the slower and uneqi 
in proportion as the objects of speculative enquiry 
ly affected the state of politics and religion ; 
that philosophy, in its most general sense, as well 
as metaphysics, the truths of which were in direct 
hostility to every kind of superstition, were more 
obstinately retarded than political enquiry itself, the 
improvement of which was only dangerous to the 
authority of kings and aristocratic assemblies ; and 
that the same observation will equally apply to the 
science of material natur 

We may farther develope the other sources of 
this inequality, as they may be traced in the objects 
of which each science treats, and the methods to 
which it has recourse. 

In the same manner the sources of inequality 
and counteraction, which operate respecting the 
very same science in different countries, are : 
the joint effect of political and natural causes. We 
may enquire, in this inequality, what it is that is to 
be ascribed to the different modes of religion, to 

form of goi .t, to the wealth of any na- 

importance, to its personal cha- 
racter, to its geographical situation, to the events 



146 

viscissitudes it has experienced, in fine, to the ac- 
cident which has produced in the midst of it any of 
those extraordinary men, whose influence, while 
it extends over the whole human race, exercises 
itself with a double energy in a more restrained 
sphere. 

We may distinguish the progress of each sci- 
ence as it is in itself, which has no other limit than 
the number of truths it includes within its sphere, 
and the progress of a nation in each science, a pro- 
gress which is regulated first by the number of men 
who are acquainted with its leading and most im- 
portant truths, and next by the number and nature 
of the truths so known. 

In fine, we are now come to that point of civi- 
lization, at which the people derive a profit from 
intellectual knowledge, not only by the services it 
reaps from men uncommonly instructed, but by 
means of having made of intellectual knowledge a 
sort of patrimony, and employing it directly and 
in its proper form to resist error, to anticipate 
or supply their wants, to relieve themselves 
from the ills of life, or take off the poignancy of 
these ills by the intervention of additional plea- 
sure. 

The history of the persecutions to which the 
champions of liberty were exposed, during this 
epoch, ought not to be forgotten. These persecu- 
tions will be found to extend from the truths of 
philosophy and politics to those of medicine, natu- 
ral history and astronomy, In the eighth century 
an ignorant pope had persecuted a deacon for con- 
tending that the earth was round, in opposition to 
the opinion of the retorical Saint Austin. In the 
seventeenth, the ignorance of another pope, much, 
more inexcuseable, delivered Galileo into the hands 
of the inquisition, accused of having proved the 



H7 

diurnal and annual motion of the earth. The gr< 
est genius that modern Italy has given to the sci- 
ences, overwhelmed with age and infirmities, was 
obliged to purchase his release from punishment 
and from prison, by asking pardon of God for hav- 
ing taught men better to understand his works, and 
to admire him in the simplicity of the eternal laws 
by which he governs the universe. 

Meanwhile, so great was the absurdity of the 
theologians, that in condescention to human under- 
standing, they granted permission to maintain the 
motion of the earth, at the same time they insist- 
ed that it should be only in the way of an hypothe- 
sis, and that the faith should receive no injury 

The astronomers, on the other hand, did the ex- 
act opposite of this ; they treated the motion of the 
earth as a reality, and spoke of its immoveableness 
with a deference only hypothetical. 

The transition from the epoch we have been 
considering to that which follows, has been distin- 
guished by three extraordinary personages, Bacon, 
Galileo, and Descartes. Bacon has revealed the 
true method of studying nature, by employing the 
three instruments with which she has furnished us 
lor the discovery of her secrets, observation, ex- 
periment and calculation. He was desirous that 
the philosopher placed in the midst of the un 

mid, as a first and necessary step in his career 
nounce every creed he had received, and even eve- 
ry notion he had formed, in order to create, as 
were, for himself, a new understanding, in which 
no idea should be admitted but what was ; 
no opinion but what was just, no truth ofwh 

:ree of certainty or probability had 
scrupilously weighed. But Bacon, thoi 
sing in a most eminent degree the g< 

hy, added not thereto the geniusoft] 



i 4 3 

and these methods for the discovery of truth, of 
which he furnished no example, were admired by 
the learned, but produced no change in the march 
of the sciences. 

Galileo had enriched them with the most use- 
ful and brilliant discoveries ; he had taught by his 
own example the means of arriving at the know- 
ledge of the laws of nature in a way sure and pro- 
ductive, in which men were not obliged to sacri- 
fice the hope of success to the fear of being misled. 
He founded the first school in which sciences have 
been taught without a mixture of superstition, pre- 
judice, or authority ; in which every other means 
than experiment and calculation have been rigo- 
rously proscribed ; but confining himself exclusive- 
ly to the mathematical and physical sciences, he 
was unable to communicate to the general mind 
that impulsion which it seemed to want. 

This honor was reserved for the daring and in- 
genious Descartes. Endowed with a master geni- 
us for the sciences, lie joined example to precept, 
in exhibiting the method of finding and ascertain- 
ing truth. This method he applied to the discove- 
ry of the laws of dioptrics, of the collision of bo- 
dies, and finally of a new branch of mathemati- 
cal science, calculated to extend and enlarge the 
bounds of all the other branches. 

He wished to extend his method to every ob- 
ject of human intelligence ; God, man, the uni- 
verse, were in turn the subject of his meditations. If 
in the physical sciences, his march be less sure than 
that of Galileo, if his philosophy be less wary than 
that of Bacon, if he may be accused of not having 
sufficiently availed himself of the lessons of the 
one, and the example of the other, to distrust his 
imagination, to interrogate nature by experim^ 
alone, to have no faith but in calculation, to ob- 



149 

serve the universe, instead of instructing it, to 
study man instead of trusting to vague conjectures 
for a knowledge of his nature ; yet the very bold- 
ness of his errors was instrumental to the progress 
of the human species. He gave activity to minds 
which the circumspection of his rivals could not 
awake from their lethargy. He called upon men 
to throw of the yoke off authority, to acknowledge 
no influence but what reason should avow : and he 
was obeyed, because he subjected by his daring, 
and fascinated by his enthusiasm. 

The human mind was not yet free, but it knew 
that it w r as formed to be free. Those w r ho persist- 
ed in the desire of retaining it in its fetters, or who 
attempted to forge new ones, were under the ne- 
cessity of proving that they ought to be imposed or 
retained, and it requires little penetration to fore- 
see that from that period they would soon be bro- 
ken in pieces. 



150 
NINTH EPOCH, 

FROM THE TIME OF DESCARTES, TO THE FORMA- 
TION OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC. 



E have seen human reason forming it- 
self slowly by the natural progress of civilization ; 
superstition usurping dominion over it, thereby to 
corrupt it, and despotism degrading and stupefy- 
ing the mental faculties by the operation of fear, 
and actual infliction of calamity. 

One nation only escaped for a while this double 
influence. In that happy land, where, liberty had 
kindled the torch of genius, the human mind, freed 
from the trammels of infancy, advanced towards 
truth with a firm and undaunted step. But con- 
quest soon introduced tyranny, sure to be followed 
by superstition, its inseparable companion, and the 
whole race of man was re-plunged into darkness, 
destined, from appearance, to be eternal. The 
dawn, however, at length was observed to peep ; 
the eyes, long condemned to obscurity, opened and 
shut their lids, inuring themselves gradually till 
they could gaze at the light, and genius dared once 
more again to shine forth upon the globe, from 
which, by fanaticism and barbarity, it so long had 
been banished. 

We have seen reason revolting at, and shaking 
off part of its chains, and by the continual acquisi- 
tion of new strength preparing and hastening the 
epoch of its liberty. 



. have now to ran thr 1 in 

mancipation ; in which, 
o a degree of 

one by one, the remainder of its fetters ; in 
free at length to pursue its course, it can no longer 
be stopped but by those obstacles, the occurrence 
of which is inevitable upon every new progress, as 
being the result of the conformation of the mind it- 
self, or of the connection which nature has estab- 
lished between our means of discovering truth, and 
rbstacles she opposes to our efforts. 

Religious intolerance had obliged seven of r 
Belgic provinces to throw off the yoke of Sps 

and to form themselves into a federal republic 

The same cause had revived in England a spirit of 
liberty, which, tired of lor. linary com- 

motions, sat down at la ..ited with a consti- 

tution, admired for a while by philosophers, but 
having at present no other support than national su- 
perstition and political hypocrisy. 

To sac. persecution is it likewise to be 

ascribed that the Swedes had the fortitude to regain 
a portion of their 

hill, amidst the commotions occasi- 
oned by theological contests, Franc. .. Hun- 
gary and Bohemia saw the feeble remains of their 
liberty, or of what, at least, bore the sen, 
of liberty, totally v om their sight. 

Ev j.ntries said to be free, it is in vain 

to k ione of the 

natui which se in- 

... 
On the c 
ed upon a po 
upon an indi 

cording own winch he ii > in 

which he is born, the fori ui assesses, or the 

N 



152 

trade he may exercise ; and a concise picture cu 
these fantastical distinctions in different nations, 
will furnish the best answer to those men who are 
still disposed to vindicate the advantage and neces- 
sity of them. 

In these countries, however, civil and personal 
liberty are guaranteed by the laws. If man be not 
all that he ought to be, still the dignity of his nature 
is not totally degraded ; some of his rights are at 
least acknowledged ; it can no longer be said of 
him that he is a slave, but only that he does not yet 
know how to become truly free. 

In nations among whom, during the same peri- 
od, liberty may have incurred losses more or less 
real, so restricted were the political rights enjoyed 
by the generality of the people, that the annihila- 
tion of the aristocracy, almost despotic, under 
which they had groaned, seems to have been more 
than a compensation. They have lost the title of 
citizen, which inequality had nearly rendered illu- 
sory ; but the quality of man has been more re- 
spected, and royal despotism has saved them from 
a state of feodal oppression, an oppression so much 
the more painful and humiliating, as the number 
and presence of the tyrants are continually reviving 
the sentiment of it. 

In nations partially free, the laws must necessa- 
rily have improved, because the interests of those 
who hold therein the reins of power, are not in all 
cases at variance with the general interests of the 
people ; and they must also have improved in des- 
potic states, either because the interest of the pub- 
lic prosperity is sometimes confounded with that of 
the despot, or because, seeking to destroy the re- 
mains of authority in the nobles or the clergy, the 
despot himself thereby communicates to the laws a 
spirit of equality, of which the motive indeed was 



Hi 

the establishment of an equality of slavery, but 
which has often been attended with salutary conse- 
quences. 

We may here minutely explain the causes which 
have produced in Europe that species of despotism, 
of which neither the ages that preceded, nor the 
other quarters of the world, have furnished an ex- 
ample ; a despotism almost absolute, but which, 
restrained by opinion, influenced by the state of 
knowledge, and tempered in a manner by its own 
interest, has frequently contributed to the progress 
of wealth, industry, instruction, and sometimes 
even to that of civil liberty. 

The manners of men were meliorated by the 
mere decay of those prejudices which had kept a- 
live their ferocity, by the influence of commerce 
and industry, the natural enemies of disorder and 
violence, from which wealth takes its flight, by the 
fear and terror occasioned by the recollection, still 
recent, of the barbarities of the preceding period, 
by a more general diffusion of the philosophical 
ideas of justice and equality, and lastly by the slow 
but sure effect of the progress of mental illumina- 
tion. 

Religious intolerance still survived ; but it 
was merely in the way of precaution, as a homage 
to the prejudices of the people, or as a safeguard 

ilist their inconstancy. It had lost its fiercest 
features. Executions at the stake, seldom resort- 
ed to, were ed by other modes of directing 
religious opinions, which, if the 
ed more ry, were, however, less bai 
till at lei jecution appeared only at ir 
and from the invetei 
habit, or from . ry weakness and comj 
sance. 

' nation, , the po- 

licy of govc not only of 



l 54 






opinion, but even of philosophy; it was howe 
slowly, and with a sort of reluctance : and we shall 
always find that, in proportion as there exists a 
I considerable distance between the point at which 
; men of profound meditation arrive in the science 
of politics and morals, and that attained by the 
generality of thinking men, whose sentiments? 
when imbibed by the multitude, form what is call- 
ed the public opinion, so those who direct the af- 
fairs of a nation, whatever may be its form of go- 
v ernment, are uniformly seen below the level of 
this opinion ; they walk in its path, they pursue its 
course ; but it is with so sluggish a pace, that, so 
froth outstripping, they never come up with it, 
behind by a considerable number 
of years, and by a portion, no less consider 
of truths. 

And new we arrive at the period when philoso- 
phy, the most general and obvious effects of which 
v/e have before remarked, obtained an influence on 
the thinking class of men, and these on the people 
and their governments, that, ceasing any longer to 
be gradual, produced a revolution in the entire 
mass of certain nations, and gave thereby a secure 
pledge of the general revolution one day to follow 
that shall embrace the whole human species. 

After ages of error, after wandering in all the 
mazes of vague and defective theories, writers up • 
on politics and the law of nations at length arrived 
at the knowledge of the true rights of man, wh 
thej/ deduced from this simple principle : that he is 
a being endowed with sensation, capable of reason 
upon and understanding his interests, and of acquiring 
moral ideas. 

* They saw that the maintenance of his rights 
was the only obect of political union, and that the 
perfection of the social art consisted in presen 



i$5 

them with the most entire equality, and in their 
fullest extent. They perceived that the means of 
securing the rights of the individual, consisting of 
general rules to be laid down in every community, 
the power of choosing these means, and determin- 
ing these rules, could vest only in the majority of 
the community : and that for this reason, as it is 
impossible for any individual in this choice to fol- 
low the dictates of his own understanding, without 
subjecting that of others, the will of the majority 
is the only principle which can be followed by all, 
without infringing upon the common equal! 

Each individual may enter into a previous en- 
gagement to comply with the will of the majority, 
which by this engagement becomes unanimity ; he 
can however bind nobody but himself, nor can he 
bind himself except so far as the majority shall 
not violate his individual rights, after having recog- 
nised them. 

Such are at once the rights of the majority over 
individuals, and the limits of these rights ; such 
is the origin of that unanimity, which renders the 
engagement of the majority binding upon all; a 
bond that ceases to operate when, by thr change of 
individuals, this species of unanimity ceases to ex- 
ist. There are objects, no doubt, upon which the 
majority would pronounce perhaps oftener in favor 
of error and mischief, than in favor of truth and 
happiness ; still the majority, and the majority only, 
can decide what are the objects which cannot pro- 
perly be referred to its own decision; it can alone 
determine as to the individuals whose judgment it 
resolves to prefer to its own, and the method which 
these individuals are to pursue in exercise of their 
judgment ; in fine, it has also an indispensible au- 

N3 



i 5 6 

thority of pronouncing whether the decisions 
its ofiicers have or have not wounded the rights of 
all. 

From these simple principles men discovered 
the folly of former notions respecting the validity 
of contracts between a people and its magistrates, 
which it was supposed could only be annulled by 
mutual consent, or by a violation of the conditions 
by one of the parties ; as well as of another opini- 
on, less servile, but equally absurd, that would 
chain a people for ever to the provisions of a consti- 
tution when once established, as if the right of 
changing it were not the security of every other 
right, as if human institutions, necessarily defec- 
tive, and capable of improvement as we become 
enlightened, were to be condemned to an eternal 
monotony. Accordingly the gover. nations 

saw themselves obliged to renounce that false and 
subtle policy, which, forgetting that all men derive 
from nature an equality of rights, would some- 
times measure the extent of those which it might 
think proper to grant by the size of territory, the 
temperature of the climate, the national character, 
the wealth of the people, the state of commerce 
and industry ; and sometimes cede 'them in unequal 
portions among the different classes of society, ac- 
cording to their birth, their fortune, or their pro- 
fession, thereby creating contrary interests and jar- 
ring powers, in order afterwards to apply correct- 
ives, which, but for these institutions, would not 
be wanted, and which, after all, are inadequate to 
the end. 

It was now no longer practicable to divide man- 
kind into two species, one destined to govern, the 
other to obey, one to deceive, the other to be dupes; 

doctrine was obliged universally to be acknow- 
ledged, that all have an equal right to be enlighten- 



<57 

ed respecting their interests, to share in 

sition of truth, and that no political authorities 

pointed by die people fo 

can be entitled to retain them in ignorance : 

darkness. 

These principles, which were vindicated by 
the generous Sydney, at the expence of his blood, 
and to which Locke gave the authority of his name, 
were afterwards developed with greater force, pre- 
cision, and extent by Rousseau, whose glory it 
to have placed them among those truths henceforth 
impossible to be forgotton or disputed. 

Man is subject to wants, and he has faculties 
to provide for them ; and from the application of 
these faculties, modified and distribut- 

ed, a mass of wealth is derived, destined to sup* 
Qts of the community. But what are 
es by which the formation or allotment, 
the preservation or consumption, the increase or 
diminution of this wealth is governed ? What 
the 1 that equilibrium between the wants and 

resources of men which is continually tending to 
establish itself; and from which results, on the one 
hand, a greater facility of providing for those wants, 
and of consequence an adequate portion of ge 
ral felicity, when wealth encreases, till it has reach- 
ed its highest degree of advancement ; and on 
other, as wealth diminishes, greater difriculi, 
and of consequence proportionate misery and 

-tchedness, till abstinence or depopulation shall 
have again restored the balance ; how, in this asto- 
nishing multiplicity of labors and their produce, of 

its and resources; in this alarming, t ..hie 

complication of interests, which connects the sub- 
sistence and well being of an obscure individual 
with the general system of social existence, which 
renders him de t on all the accidents of na- 



Hire and every political event, and extends in a 
manner to the whole globe his faculty of experien- 
cing privations or enjoyments ; how is it that, in 
this seeming chaos, we still perceive, by a general 
law of the moral world, the efforts of each indivi- 
dual for himself conducing to the good of the 
whole, and notwithstanding the open conflict of in- 
imical interests, the public welfare requiring that 
each should understand his own interest, and be 
able to pursue it freely and uncontrouled ? 

Hence it appears to be one of the rights of man 
that he should employ his faculties, dispose of his 
wealth, and provide for his wants in whatever man- 
ner he shall think best. The general interest of 
the society, so far from restraining him in this re- 
spect, forbids, on the contrary, every such attempt ; 
and in this department of public administrati- 
on, the care of securing to every man the rights 
which he derives from nature, is the only sound 
policy, the only controul which the general will can 
exercise over the individuals of the community. 

But this principle acknowledged, there are still 
duties incumbent upon the administrators of the 
general will, the sovereign authority. It is for this 
authority to establish the regulations which are des- 
tined to ascertain, in exchanges of every kind, the 
weight, the bulk, the length, and quantity of things 
to be exchanged. 

It is for this authority to ordain a common 
standard of valuation, that may apply to all com- 
modities and facillitate the calculation of their va- 
luations and comparison, and which, bearing itself 
an intrinsic value, may be employed in all cases as 
the medium of exchange. ....a regulation without 
which commerce, restrained to the mere operati- 
ons of barter, cannot acquire the necessary acti* 
vity. 



x 59 

The growth of every year presents us with a 
supererogatory value, which is destined neither to 
remunerate the labor of which this growth is 
■fruit, nor to supply the stock which is to secure 
equal and more abundant growth in time to conic. 
The possessor of this supererogatory value d< 
not owe it immediately to h , and po 

it independantly of the daily and indispensible use 
of his faculties for the supply of his wants. This 
supererogatory growth is therefore the stock to 
which the sovereign authority may have recourse 
without injuring the rights of any, to supply the 
expences which are requisite for the security of the 
state, its intrinsic tranquillity, the preservation of 
the rights of ail the exercise of the author] 

uted for the establishment or ad ation of 

law, in fine, of the maintenance thro 
branches of the public prosperity. There are cer- 
tain operations, establishments, and instil 
beneficial to the comnv large, which it is 

the o^ice of the community to inl- 
and Qtend, and which are calculated to s 
ply the defects of personal inclination, and t 
the struggle of opposite interests, whether for 
improvement of agriculture, industry and c 
merce, or to prevent or sh the evils ei 
on our nature, or those which accident is coi 
ally accumulating upon us. 

Till the c cement of the e] 

now considering, and even for some time aft 

>e objects had been abandoned to chance, to 

city of governments, to the ar 
tenders, or to the prejudices and par 

powerful classes of society ; but a 
Descartes, the illustrious and unfortuna 
Witt, perceived how necessary it w 
cal economy, like every ot 



i6o 

governed by the principles of philosophy and sub- 
jected to the rules of a rigid calculation. 

It made however little progress, till the peace 
of Utrecht promised to Europe a durable tranquil- 
lity. From this period, neglected as it had hither- 
to been, it became a subject of almost general at- 
tention ; and by Stuart, Smith, and particularly by 
the French economists, it was suddenly elevated, 
at least as to precision and purity of principles, to 
a degree of perfection, not to have been expected 
after the long and total indifference which had pre- 
vailed upon the subject. 

The cause however of so unparalled a progress 
is chiefly to be found in the advancement of that 
branch of philosophy comprehended in the term 
metaphysics, taking the word in its most extensive 
signification. 

Descartes had restored this branch of philo- 
sophy to the dominion of reason. He perceived 
the propriety of deducing it from those simple and 
evident truths which are revealed to us by an inves- 
tigation of the operations of the mind* But scarce- 
ly had he discovered this principle than his eager 
immagination led him to depart from it, and philo- 
sophy appeared for a time to have resumed its in- 
dependence only to become the prey of new errors. 
At length Locke made himself master of the pro- 
per clew. He shewed that a precise and accurate 
analysis of ideas, reducing them to ideas earlier in 
their origin or more simple in their structure, was 
the only means to avoid the being lost in a chaos of 
notions incomplete, incoherent, and undetermin- 
ed, disorderly because suggested by accident, and 
afterwards entertained without reflecting on their 
nature. 

He proved by this analysis, that the whole cir- 
cle of our ideas results merely from the op 



i6i 

of our intellect upon the sensations we have receiv- 
ed, or more accurately speaking, are compounded 
of sensations offering themselves simultaneously to 
the memory, and after such a manner, that the at- 
tention is fixed and the perception bounded to a 
particular branch or view of the sensations them- 
selves. 

He shewed that by taking one single word to 
represent one single idea, properly analised and 
defined, we are enabled to recal constantly the 
same idea, that is, the same simultaneous result 
of certain simple ideas, and of consequence can 
introduce this idea into a train of reasoning with- 
out risk of misleading ourselves. 

On the contrary, if our words do not represent 
fixed and definite ideas, they will at different times 
suggest different ideas to the mind and become the 
most fruitful source of error. 

In fine, Locke was the first who ventured to 
prescribe the limits of the human understanding, 
or rather to determine the nature of the truths it 
can ascertain and the objects it can embrace* 

It was not long before this method was adopt- 
ed by philosophers in general, in treating of morals 
and politics, by which a degree of certainty was 
given to those sciences little inferior to that which 
obtained in the natural sciences admitting onlv of 
such conclusions as could be proved, separating 
these from doubtful notions, and content to remain 
ignorant of whatever is out of the reach of human 
comprehension. 

In the same manner, by analysing the faculty 
of experiencing pain and pleasure, men arrived at 
the origin of their notions of morality, and the 
foundation of those general principles which form 
the necessary and immutable laws of justice; and 
consequently discovered the proper motives of con- 



162 

ming their conduct to those laws, which being 
deduced from the nature of our feeling, may not 
improperly be called our moral constitution. 

The same system became, in a manner, a ge- 
neral instrument of acquiring knowledge. It was 
employed to ascertain the truths of natural philoso- 
phy, to try the facts of history, and to give laws to 
taste. In a word, the process of the human mind 
in every species of enquiry was regulated by this 
principle ; and it is this latest effort of science 
which has placed an everlasting barrier between 
the human race and the old mistakes of its infancy, 
that will for ever preserve us from a relapse into 
former ignorance, since it has prepared the means 
of undermining not only our present errors, but 
all those by which they may be replaced, and which 
will succed each other only to possess a feeble and 
temporary influence. 

In Germany, however, a man of a vast and pro- 

tid genius laid the foundations of a new theory. 
His bold and ardent mind disdained to rest on the 
suppositions of a modest philosophy, which left in 
doubt those great questions of spiritual existence, 
the immortality of the soul, the free will of man 
and of God, and the existence of vice and misery 
in a world framed by a being whose infinite wisdom 
and goodness miglit be supposed to banish them 
from his creation. Leibnitz cut the knot which a 

timid system had in vain attempted to unloose 

He supposed the universe to be composed of atoms, 
which were simple, eternal, and equal in their na- 
ture. He contended that the relative situation of 
each of these atoms, with respect to every other, 
occasioned the qualities distinguishing it from all 

e rs; the human soul, and the minutest particle of 
a mass of stone, being each of them equally one of 






* b 3 

these atoms, differing only in consequence of the 
respective places they occupy in the order of the 
universe. 

He maintained that, of all the possible combi- 
nations which could be formed of these atoms, an 
infinitely wise being had preferred, and could not 
but prefer, the most perfect ; and that if, in that 
which exists, we are afflicted with the presence of 
vice and misery, still there is no other possible 
combination that would not be productive of great- 
er evils. 

Such was the nature of this theory, which, sup- 
ported by the countrymen of Leibnitz, retarded in 
that part of the world the progress of philosophy. 
Meanwhile there started up in England an entire 
sect, who embraced with zeal, and defended with 
eloquence, the scheme of optimism : but, less a- 
cute and profound than Leibnitz, who founded his 
system upon the supposition of its being impossi- 
ble, from his very nature, that an all-wise being 
should plan any other universe than that which was 
best, they endeavored to discover in the terraque- 
ous part of the world the proofs of this perfection, 
and losing thereby the advantages which attach to 
this system considered generally and in the ab- 
stract, they frequently fell into absurd and redicu- 
lous reasonings. 

Meanwhile, in Scotland other philosophers, 
not perceiving that the analysis of the develope- 
ment of our actual faculties led to a principle which 
gave to the morality of our actions a basis suffici- 
ently solid and pure, attributed to the human soli! 
a new faculty, distinct from those of sensation and 
reason, though at the same time combining itself 
with them; of the existence of which they could 
advance no other proof, than that it was impossible 

O 



164 

to form a consistent theory without it. In the "his- 
tory of these opinions, it will be seen, that, while 
they have proved injurious to the progress of philo- 
sophy itself; they have tended to give a more rapid 
and extensive spread to ideas truly scientific, con- 
nected with philosophy. 

Hitherto we have exhibited the state of phi- 
losophy only among men by whom it has in a man- 
ner been studied, investigated, and perfected. It 
remains to mark its influence on the general opini- 
on, and to show, that, while it arrived at the cer- 
tain and inflallible means of discovering and recog- 
nising truth, reason at the same time detected the 
delusions into which it had so often been led by a 
respect for authority or a misguided imaginati- 
on, and undermined those prejudices in the mass of 
individuals which had so long been the scourge, at 
once corrupting and inflicting calamity upon the hu- 
man species. 

The period at length arrived when men no 
longer feared openly to avow the right, so long 
withheld^ and even unknown, of subjecting every 
opinion to the test of reason, or, in other words, 
of employing, in their search after truth, the only 
means they possess for its discovery. Every man 
learned, with a degree of pride and exultation, 
that nature had not condemned him to see with 
the eyes and to conform his judgment to the caprice 
of another. The. superstitions of antiquity accord- 
ingly disappeared ; and the debasement of reason 
to the shrine of supernatural faith, was as rarely to 
be found in society as in the circles of metaphysics 
and philosophy. 

A class of men speedily made their appear- 
ance in Europe, whose object was le3S to discover 
and investigate truth, than to disseminate it; who, 
pursuing prejudice through all the haunts and asy- 



ns in which the clergy, the schools, govern- 
ments, and privileged corporations had placed and 
protected it, made it their glory rather to eradicate 
popular errors, than add to the stores of human 
knowledge ; thus aiding indirectly the progress Cx 
mankind, but in a way neither less arduous, nor 
less beneficiaL 

In England, Collins and Bolingbroke, and in 
France, Bayle, Fontenelle, Montesquieu, and the 
respective disciples of these celebrated men, com- 
bated on the side of truth with all the weapons that 
learning, wit and genius were able to furnish ; as- 
suming every shape, employing every tone, from 
the sublime and pathetic to pleasantry and satire, 
from the most laboured investigation to an interest- 
ing romance or a fugitive essay ; accommodating 
truth to those eyes that were too weak to bear its 
effulgence ; artfully caressing prejudice, the m 
easily to strangle it ; never aiming a direct blov 
errors, never attacking more than one at a time, 
nor even that one in all its fortresses ; sometimes 
soothing the enemies of reason, by pretending to 
require in religion but a partial toleration, in poli- 
tics but a limitted freedom ; siding with despotism, 
when their hostilities were directed against the 
priesthood, and with priests when their object was 
to unmask the despot ; sapping the principle of both 
these pests of human happiness, striking at the 
root of both these baneful trees, while apparen 
wishing for the reform only of glaring abuses and 
ningly confining themselves to lopping oir 

ranches ; sometimes representing to 
ns of liberty, that superstition, > 
covers despotism as with a coat of mail, 

tim which ought to be sacrificed, the 
that ought to be bro ad sometimes dc 

; it to tyrants as the i 



r66 

and alarming'them with recitals of its hypocritical 
conspiracies and its sanguinary vengeance. These 
writers, meanwhile, were uniform in their vindi- 
cation of freedom of thinking and freedom of wri- 
ting, as privileges upon which depended the salva- 
tion of mankind. They declaimed, without cessa- 
tion or weariness, against the crimes both of fana- 
tics and tyrants, exposing every feature of severity, 
of cruelty, of oppression, whether in religion, in 
administration, in manners, or in laws ; command- 
ing kings, soldiers, magistrates and priests, in the 
name of truth and of nature, to respect the blood 
of mankind ; calling upon them, with energy, to 
answer for the lives still profusely sacrificed in the 
field of battle or by the infliction of punishments, 
r else to ; Direct this inhuman policy, this murder- 
ous insensibility; and lastly, in every place, and 
upon every occasion, rallying the friends of man- 
kind with the cry of rcayjn y toleration^ and humanity. 
Such was this new philosophy. Accordingly 
to those numerous classes that exist by prejudice, 
that live upon error, and that, but for the credulity 
of the people, would be powerless and extinct, it 
became a common object or*. It was 

every where received an where persecuted, 

having kings, priests, no. glstrates among 

the number of its friends as well as of its enemies. 
Its leaders, however, had almost always the art to 
de the pursuits of vengeance, while they expos- 
ed fc] es to hatred ; and to screen themselves 
from persecution, while at the same time they suf- 
ci entity discovered themselves not to lose the lau- 
rels of their glory. 

It frequently happened that a government re- 
warded them with one hand, and with the other 
paid their enemies for calumniating them ; pro- 
scribed them, yet was proud that fortune had ho- 



zed its dominions with their birth ; punished 
their opinions, and at the same t: 
been ashamed not to be supposed a convert thereto. 
These opinions were shortly embraced by eve- 
ry enlightened mind. By some they were op< 
avowed, by others concealed under an hypoci 
more or less ap ing to the timidi: 

firmness of their characters, and accord:: 
were influenced by the contending interests of th 
profession or their vanity. At length the prid 
ranging on the side of erudition became predomi- 
nant, and sentiments were professed with the 
slightest caution, which, in the ages that preceed- 
ed, had been concealed by the most profound dis- 
simulation. 

Look to the different countries of Europe into 
which, from the prevalence of the French language, 
become almost universal; it was impossible for the 
inquisitorial spirit of governments and priests to 
to prevent this philosophy from penetrating, and 
shall see how rapid was its progress. Mean- 
e cannot overlook how artfully tyranny and 
superstition employed against it all the argumei 
invented to prove the weakness and fallibility oi* 
human judgment, all the motives which the know- 
ledge of man had been able to suggest for mistrust- 
ing his senses, for doubting and scrutinizing his 
reason; thus converting scepticism itself into 
:rument by which to aid the cause of credulity. 
Thi rable system, so simple in its ptf 

an unrestricted freedom 
the surest encouragement to commerce and indus- 
try, which would free the people from the destn 
tive pestilence, the humiliating yoke of those tax- 
30 great inequality, I ■ ith 
nt an expence, and 
i circumstances of such attrr 
O 2 



*fe8 

substituting in their room a mode of contribution 
at once equal and just, and of which the burthen 
would scarcely be felt ; this theory,, which connects 
the power and wealth of a state with the happiness 
of individuals and a respect for their rights, which 
unites by the bond of a common felicity the diffe- 
rent classes into which societies naturally divide 
themselves ; this benevolent idea of a fraternity of 
the whole human race, of which no national inte- 
rest shall ever more intervene to disturb the harmo- 
ny ; these principles, so attractive from the gene- 
rous spirit that prevades them, as well as from their 
simplicity and comprehension, were propagated 
with enthusiasm by the French economists. 

The success of these writers was less rapid and 
less general than that of the philosophers; they 
had to combat prejudices more refined, errors more 
subtle. Frequently they were obliged to enlighten 
before they could undeceive, and to instruct good 
sense before they could venture to appeal to it as 
their judge. 

Le, however, to the whole of their doctrine 
they gained but a small number of converts; if 
the general nature and inflexibility of their princi- 
ples were discouraging to the minds of many ; if 
they injured their cause by affecting an obscure and 
dogmatical stile, by too much postponing the inte- 
rests of political freedom to the freedom of com- 
merce, and by insisting too magisterially upon cer- 
tain branches of their system, which they had not 
sufficiently investigated ; they nevertheless suc- 
ceeded in rendering odious and contemptible that 
dastardly, that base and corrupt policy which plai- 
ces the prosperity of a nation in the subjection and 
impoverishment of its neighbours, in the narrow 
views of a code of prohibitions, and in the petty 
/.tions of a tyrannical revenue. 



169 

: the new truths with which genious h 
riched philosophy and the science of political e 
no my, adopted in a greater or less degree ; 
of enlightened understandings, extended 
ther their salutary influence. 

The art of printing had been applied to so many 
subjects, books had so rapidly encreased, they 
were so admirably adapted to every taste, e\ 
degree of information, and every situation of li 
they afforded so easy and frequently so delightful 
an instruction, they had opened so many doors to 
truth, which it was impossible ever to close again, 
that there was no longer a class or profession of 
mankind from whom the light of knowledge could 
absolutely be excluded. Accordingly, though there 
still remained a multitude of individuals condemn- 
ed to a forced or voluntary ignorance, yet was the 
barrier between the enlightened and unenlightened 
portioned of mankind nearly effaced, and an insen- 
sible gradation occupied the space which separates 
the two extremes of genius and stupidity. 

Thus there prevailed a general knowledge of 
the natural rights of man ; the opinion even that 
these rights are inalienable and imprescriptible ; a 
decided partiality for freedom of thinking and wri- 
ting ; for the enfranchisement of industry and com- 
merce ; for the melioration of the condition of the 
people ; for the repeal of penal statutes against 
religious nonconformists ; for the abolition of tor- 
ture and barbarous punishments ; the desire of a 
milder system of criminal legislation; of a juris- 
prudence that should give to innocence a complete 
security : of a civil code more simple, as well as 
more conformable to reason and jus iv; indiffer- 
ence as to systems of religion, considered at length 
ai the offspring of superstition, or ranked in the 
:\iber of political inventions ; hatred of hypo 



170 

sy and fanaticism; contempt for prejudices ; and 
lastly, a zeal for the propagation of truth. These 
principles, passing by degrees from the writings of 
philosophers into every class of society whose in- 
struction was not confined to the catechism and the 
scriptures, became the common creed, the symbol 
and type of all men who were not idiots on the one 
hand, or, on the other, assertors of the policy of 
Machiavelism. In some countries these senti- 
ments formed so nearly the general opinion, that 
the mass even of the people seemed ready to obey 
their dictates and act from their impulse. 

The love of mankind, that is to say, that ac- 
tive compassion which interests itself in all the af- 
flictions of the human race, and regards with hor- 
ror whatever, in public institutions, in the acts of 
government, or the pursuits of individuals, adds 
to the inevitable misfortunes of nature, was the ne- 
cessary result of these principles. It breathed in 
every work, it prevailed in every conversation, and 
its benign effects were already visible even in the 
laws and administration of countries subject to des- 
potism. 

The philosophers of different nations embrac- 
ing, in their meditations, the entire interests of 
man, without distinction of country, of color, or 
of sect, formed, notwithstanding the difference of 
their speculative opinions, a firm and united pha- 
lanx against every description of error, every spe- 
cies of tyranny. Animated by the sentiment of 
universal philanthropy, they declaimed' equally a- 
gainst injustice, whether existing in a foreign coun- 
try or exercised by their own country against a 
foreign nation. They impeached in Europe the 
avidity which stained the shores of America, 
Africa, and Asia with cruelty and crimes. The 
philosophers of France and England gloried in 
assuming the apellation, and fulfilling .the duties 



1>I 

of friends to those very negroes whom their igno- 
rant oppressors disdained to rank in the class of 
men. The French writers bestowed the tribute of 
their praise on the toleration granted in Russia and 
Sweden, while Beccaria refuted in Italy the barba- 
rous maxims of Gallic jurisprudence. The French 
also endeavored to open the eyes of England re- 
specting her commercial prejudices, and her super- 
stitious reverenjQe for the errors of her constituti- 
on ; while the virtuous Howard remonstrated at 

same time with the French upon the cool bar- 
barity which sacrificed so many human victims in 
their prisons and hospitals. 

Neither the violence nor the corrupt arts of 
gQyernnicnt, neither the intolerance of priests, nor 

n the prejudices of the people themselves, pos- 
sessed any longer the fatal power of suppressing 
the voice of truth ; and nothing remained to screen 
the enemies of reason, or the oppressors of liberty, 
from the sentence which was about to be pronounc- 
ed upon them by the unanimous suffrage of Eu- 
rope. 

While the fabric of prejudice was thus totter- 
ing to its foundations, a fatal blow was given to it 
by a doctrine, of which Turgot, Price, and Priest- 
ly were the first and most illustrious advocates ; it 

:lic doctrine of the infinite perfectibility of the 
human mind. The consideration of this opinion 
will fail under the tenth division of our work, where 
it will be developed with sufficient minuteness. But 
we shall embrace this opportunity of exposing the 
origin and progress of a false system of philoso- 
phy, to the overthrow of which the doctrine of the 
perfectibility of man is become so nee 

The sophistical doctrine to which I allude, de- 
rived its origin from the pride of some men, and 
ishness of others. Its real, though c< 



IJ2 

ed object, was to give duration to ignorance, anct 
to prolong the reign of prejudice. The adkerents 
of this doctrine, who have been numerous, some- 
times attempted to delude the reason by brilliant 
paradoxes, or to seduce it by the specious charms 
of an universal pyrrhonism. Sometimes they as- 
sumed the boldness peremptorily to declare, that 
the advancement of knowledge threatened the most 
fatal consequences to human happiness and liberty ; 
at other times they declaimed, with pompous en- 
thusiasm, in favor of an imaginary wisdom and 
sublimity, that disdained the cold progress of ana- 
lysis, and the tardy mechanical path of experience* 
Upon one occasion, they were accustomed to speak 
of philosophy and the abstruse sciences as theories 
too subtle for the investigation of the human under- 
standing, urged as we are by daily wants, and sub- 
jected to the most sudden vicissitudes ; at another, 
they, treated them as a mass of blind and idle con- 
jectures, the false estimation of which was sure to 
disappear from the mind of a man habituated to 
life and experience*. Incessantly did they lament 
the decay and decrepitude of knowledge, in the 
midst of its most brilliant progress ; the rapid de- 
gradation of the human species, at the moment 
that men were ready to assert their rights and trust 
to their own understandings ; an approaching sera 
of barbarism, darkness and slavery, when evidence 
was so perpetually accumulating that the revi- 
ved of such an sera was no longer to be feared 

They seemed humbled by the advances of their 
species, either because they could not boast of hav- 
ing contributed to them, or because they saw them- 
selves menaced with a speedy termination of their 
influence or importance. In the meanwhile, a 
certain number of intellectual mountebanks, more 
skilful than those who desperately endeavored to 
prep th of decl : perstition, attempt- 



^73 

ed, out of the wreck of superstition, erecc a new 
religio .s creed which should no longer demand of 
our reason any more than a sort of formal submis- 
sion, and which indulged us with a perfect liberty 
of conscience, provided we would admit some 
slight fragment of incomprehensibility into our 
system. A second class of these mountebanks as- 
sayed to revive, by means of secret associations, 
the forgotton mysteries of a sort of oriental theur- 
gy. The errors of the people they left undisturb- 
ed : upon their own disciples they entailed new 
terrors, and ventured to hope, by a process of cun- 
ning, to restore the ancient tyranny of the sacerdo- 
tal princes of India and Egypt. In the mean time, 
philosophy, leaning upon the pillar which science 
had prepared, smiled at their efforts, and saw one 
attempt vanish after another, as the waves retire 
from the foot of an immovable rock. 

By comparing the disposition of the public mind 
which I have already sketched, with the prevail 
systems of government, we shall perceive, with- 
out difficulty, that an important revolution was in- 
evitable, and that there were two ways only in 
which it could take place : either the people them- 
selves would establish a system of policy upon 
those principles of nature and reason, which philo- 
sophy had rendered so dear to their hearts ; or go- 
vernment might hasten to superscede this event, by 
reforming its vices, and g( ; its conduct by 

the public opinion. One of these revolutions 
would be more speedy, more radical, but also 
more tempestuous ; the other less rapid, less cc 
plete, but more tranquil ; in the one, I and 

happiness would be purchased at the 01 

lsient evils ; in the other, tl 

. part of the enjoy, 
a state of perfect freedom, would be retarded 



If 4 

in its progress, perhaps, for a considerable period* 
though it would be impossible in the end that it 
should not arrive. 

The corruption and ignorance of die rulers of 
nations have preferred, it seems the former of these 
modes ; and the sudden triumph of reason and li- 
berty has avenged the human race. 

The simple dictates of good sense had taught the 
inhabitants of the British colonies, that men born on 
the American side of the Atlantic ocean had re- 
ceived from nature the same rights as others born 
under the meridian of Greenwich, and that a dif- 
ference of sixty-six degrees of longitude could 
have no power of changing them. They under- 
stood, more perfecdy perhaps than Europeans, 
what were the rights common to ail the individu- 
als of the human race; and among these they in- 
cluded the right of not paying any tax to which 
they had not consented. But the British govern- 
ment, pretending to believe that God had created 
America, as well as Asia, for the gratification and 
good pleasure of the inhabitants of London, re- 
solved to hold in bondage a subject nation, situat- 
ed across the seas at the distance of three thousand 
miles, intending to make her the instrument in due 
time of enslaving the mother country itself. Ac- 
cordingly, it commanded the servile representa- 
tives of the people of England to violate the rights 
of America, by the subjecting her to compulsory 
taxation. This injustice she conceived, authoris- 
ed her to dissolve every tie of connection, and she 
declared her independence. 

Then was observed, for the first time, the ex- 
ample of a great people throwing off at once every 
species of chains, and peaceably framing for itself 
the form of government and the laws which it judg- 
ed would be most conducive to its happiness ; and 



i/5 

as, from its geographical position, and its former 
politic?J state, it was obliged to become a federal 
nation, thirteen republican constitutions were seen 
to grow up in its bosom, having for their basis a so- 
lemn recognition of the natural rights of man, and 
for their first object the preservation of those rights 
through every department of the union. 

If we examine the nature of these constitutions, 
we shall discover in what respect they were indebt- 
ed to the progress of the political sciences, and 
what was the portion of error, resulting from the 
prejudices of education which formed its way into 
them : why, for instance, the simplicity of these 
constitutions is disfigured by the system of a ba- 

ce of powers ; and why an identity of interests, 
rather than an equality of rights, is adopted as their 
principle. It is manifest that this principle of iden- 
tity of interests, when made the rule of political 
rights is not only a violation of such rights, w r ith 
respect to those who are denied an equal share in 
the exercise of them, but that it ceases to exist the 
very instant it becomes an actual inequality. We 
insist the rather on this, as it is the only dangerous 
error remaining, the only error respecting which 
men of enlightened minds want still to be unde- 
ceived. At the same time, however, we see real- 
ized in these republics an idea, at that time almost 
new even in theory ; I mean the necessity of estab- 
lishing by law a regular and peaceable mode of re- 
forming the constitutions themselves, and of plac- 
ing this business in other hands than those entrust- 
ed with the legislative power. 

Meanwhile, in consequence of America de- 
claring herself independent of the British govern- 
ment, a war ensued between the two enlightened 
nations, in which one contended for the natural 

P 



176 

rights of mankind, the other for that impious doc- 
trine which subjects these rights to prescription, 

to political interests, and written conventions 

The great cause at issue was tried, during this war, 
in the tribunal of opinion, and, as it were, before 
the assembled nations of mankind. The rights of 
men were freely investigated, and strenuously sup- 
ported in writings which circulated from the banks 
of the Neva to those of the Guadalquivir. These 
discussions penetrated into the most enslaved coun- 
tries, into the most distant and retired hamlets 

The simple inhabitants were astonished to hear of 
rights belonging to them : they enquired into the 
nature and importance of those rights : they found 
that other men were in arms, to re-conquer or to 
defend them. 

In this state of things it could not be long be- 
fore the transatlantic revolution must find its imi- 
tators in the European quarter of the world. And 
if there existed a country in which, from 'attach- 
ment to their cause, the writings and princij les of 
the Americans were more widely disseminated than 
in any other part of Europe ; a country at once the 
most enlightened, and the least free ; in which phi- 
losophers had soared to the sumblimest pitch of in- 
tellectual attainment, and the government was sunk 
in the deepest and most intolerable ignorance ; 
where the spirit of the laws was so far below the 
general spirit and illumination, that national pride 
and inveterate prejudice were alike ashamed of 
vindicating the old institutions : if, I say, there 
existed such a country, were not the people of that 
country destined by the very nature of things, to 
give the first impulse to this revolution, expected 
by thefri ends of humanity with such eager impa- 
tience, such ardent hope ? Accordingly it was 
commence with France. 



*/7 

The impolicy and unskil fulness of the Fre 
government hastened the event. It was guided by 
the hand of philosophy, and the popular foree de- 
stroyed the obstacles that otherwise might have 
rested its progress. 

It was more complete, more entire than thai 
America, and of consequence was attended v 
greater convulsions in the interior of the riati< 
because the Americans, satisfied with the cod- 
civil and criminal legislation which they had deriv- 
ed from England, having no corrupt system erf 
nance to reform, no feodal tyrannies, no here o' 

astinctions, no privileges of rich and powerful 
corporations, no system of religious intolerance to 
destroy, had only to direct their attention to the 
establishment of new powers to be substituted in 
the place of those hitherto exercised over them by 
the British government. In these innovations 
there was nothing that extended to the mass of the 
people, nothing that altered the subsisting relations 
formed between individuals : whereas the French 
revolution, for reasons exactly the reverse, had to 
embrace the whole economy of society, to cha 
every social relation, to penetrate to the smallest 
link of the political chain, even to those individu- 
als, who, living in peace upon their property, or 
by their industry, were equally unconnected \ 

notions, whether by their opinions and 
their oc ;s, or by the interests of fortune, 

of ambition, or of glory. 

The Americans, as they appeared only to com- 
bat against the tyrannical prejudices of the mot! 
country, had for allies the rival powers of England, 
while other nations, jealous of wealth, and dis- 

ed at the pride of that country, aided, by their 
aspirations, the triumph of justice : thus 

against the opp: 



178 

son The French, on the contrary, attacked at 
once the despotism of kings, the political inequali- 
ty of constitutions partially free, the pride and pre- 
rogatives of nobility, the domination, intolerance, 
and rapacity of priests, and the enormity of feodal 
claims, still respected in almost every nation in Eu- 
rope ; and accordingly the powers we have menti- 
oned, united in favor of tyranny ; and there ap- 
peared on the side of the Gallic revolution the voice 
only of some enlightened sages, and the timid 
wishes of certain oppressed nations : succors, mean- 
while, of which all the artifices of calumny have 

n employed to deprive it. 

It would he easy to show how much more pure, 

, and profound, are the principles upon 

which the constitution and laws of France have 

been formed, than those which directed the Ame- 

ns, and how much more completely the authors 
hdrawn themselves from the influence of a 
;:' prejudices ; that the great basis of poli- 
cy, the equality of rights, has never been superse- 
ded by that xictious identity of interests, which has 
so often been made its feeble and hypocritical sub- 
stitute ; that the limits prescribed to political pow* 
er have been put in the place of that specious ba- 
lance which has so long been admired ; that w r e were 
the first to dare, in a great nation necessarily dis- 
persed, and which cannot personally be assembled 

in broken and numerous parcels, to maintain 

in the people their rights of sovereignty, the right 

of obeying no laws but those which, though origi- 

|n a representative authority, shall have re- 

their last sanction from the nation itself, 

, which, if they be found injurious to its rights 
or interests, the nation is always organized to r 
form by a regular act of its 



*79 

From the time when the genius of Descartes 
impressed on the minds of men that general im- 
pulse, which is the first principle of a revolution 
in the destiny of the human species, to the happy 
period of entire social liberty, in which man has 
not been able to regain his natural independence 
till after having passed through a long series of 
ages of misfortune and slavery, the view of the 
progress of mathematital and physical science pre- 
sents to us an immense horizon, of which it is ne- 
cessary to distribute and assort the several parts, 
whether wc may be desirous of fully comprehend- 
ing the whole, or of observing their mutual relati- 
ons. 

The application of algebra to geometry not on- 
ly became the fruiful source of discoveries in both 
sciences, but they prove, from this striking exam- 
ple, how much the method of computation of mag- 
nitudes in general may be extended to all questi- 
ons, the_ object of which consists in the measure 
and extension. Descartes first announced the truth, 
that they would be employed with equal success 
hereafter upon all objects susceptible of precise va- 
luation ; and this great discovery, by shewing for 
the first time the ultimate purpose of these scien- 
ces, that is to say, the strict calculation of every 
species of truth, afforded the hope of attaining 
this point, at the same time that it exhibited the 
means. 

Tins discovery was soon succeeded by that of 
a new method of computing, which teaches us to 
find the ratios of the successive increments or de- 
crements of a variable quantity, or to deduce the 
quantity itself when this ratio is given ; whether the 
increments be supposed of infinite magnitude, or 

ir ratio be sought for the instant only of tlu 
P'S 



I So 

vanishment; a method which, being extended 
all the combination of variable magnitudes, and to 
all the hypothesis of their variations, leads to a de- 
termination, with regard to all things precisely 
mensurable of the ratios of their elements, or of 
the things themselves, from the knowledge of those 
proportions which they mutually have, provided 
the ratios of their elements only be given. 

We are indebted to Newton and Leibnitz for 
the invention of those methods ; but the labors of 
the geometers of the preceeding are prepared 
the way for this discovery. The progress of these 
sciences, which has been uninterrupted for more 
than a century, is the work, and establishes the re- 
putation, of a number of men of genius. They 
present to the eyes of the philosopher, who is able 
to observe them, even though he may not follow 
their steps, a striking monument of the force of the 
human mind. 

When we explain the formation and principles 
of algebraic language, which along is accurate and 
truly analytic ; the nature of the technical proces- 
ses of this science ; and the comparison of these 
processes with the natural operations of the human 
mind, we may prove that, if this method be not 
itself a peculiar instrument in the science of quan- 
tity, it certainly includes the principles of an uni- 
versal instrument applicable to all possible combi- 
nations of ideas. 

Rational mechanics soon became a vast and 
profound science. The true laws of the collision 
of bodies, respecting which Descartes was deceiv- 
ed, were at length known. 

Huyghens discovered the laws of circular 
motions ; and at the same time he gives a method 
determining the radius curvature for every point of 
a given curve. By uniting both theories ; Newton 



iSi 

invented the theory of curve-line< 

) those laws according to which Kepler 
had discovered that the planets describe their el 
ticai orbits, 

A planet, supposed to be projected into g 
at a given instant, with a given velocity eo 

tion, will describe round die sun an ellipsis, by- 
virtue of a force directed to that star, and propor- 
tional to the inverse ratio of the squares of the 
distances. The same force retains the satellites 
in their orbits round the primary planets ; it per- 
vades the whole system of Heavenly bodies, 
acts reciprocally between all their c i ts. 

The regularity of the planetary ellipses is dis- 
turbed, and the calculation precisely explains the 
very slightest degrees of these perturbations. It 
is equally applicable to the comets, and determines 
their orbits with such precision, as to foretel their 
return. The peculiar motion observed in the :; 
of rotation of the earth and the moon, affords ad- 
ditional proof of the existence of this universal 
force. Lastly, it is the cause of the weight of 
terrestrial bodies, in which effect it appears to be 
invariable, because w r e have no means of observing 
its action at diftances from the centre, which are 
sufficiently remote from each other. 

Thus we see man has at last become acquaint- 
ed, for the first time, with one of the physical 
laws of the universe. Hitherto it stands unparal- 
leled, as does the glory of him who discoveied it. 

An hundred years of labor and investigation 
have confirmed this law, to which all the celestial 
phenomena are subjected, with an accuracy which 
may be said to be miraculous. Every time in 
which an apparent deviation has presented itself, 
the transient uncertainty has soon become a subj 
of new triumph to the science. 



iS2 

The philosopher is, in almost every instance, 
compelled to have recourse to the works of a man 
of genius for the secret clue which led him to dis- 
covery ; but here interest, inspired by admiration, 
has discovered and preserved anecdotes of the 
greatest value, since they permit us to follow New- 
ton step by step. They serve to show how much 
the happy combinations of external events, or 
chance, unite with the efforts of genius in produc- 
ing a great discovery, and how easily combinations 
of a less favorable nature might have retarded 
them, or reserved them for other hands. 

But Newton did more, perhaps, in favor of 
the progress of the human mind, than merely dis- 
covering this general lav/ of nature ; he taught men 
to admit in natural philosophy no other theories 
but such as are precise, and susceptible of calcula- 
tion ; which give an account not only of the exist- 
ence of a phenomenon, but its quantity and extent. 
Nevertheless he was accused of reviving the oc* 
cult qualities of the ancients, because he had con- 
fined himself to refer the general cause of celesti- 
al appearances to a simple fact, of which observati- 
on proved the incontestable reality ; and this accu- 
sation is itself a proof how much the methods of 
the sciences still require to be enlightened by phi- 
losophy. 

A great number of problems in statics and 
dynamics had been successively proposed and re- 
solved, when Alembert discovered a general prin- 
ciple adequate to the determination of the motions 
of any number of points acted on by any forces, 
and connected by conditions. He soon extended 
the same principle to finite bodies of a determinate 
figure j to those which, from elasticity or flexibili- 
ty, are capable of changing their figure, but ac- 
cording to certain laws and preserving certain*-:- 



lations between th ts ; and lastly i 

themselves, whether they preserve the same densi- 
ty, or exist in a state of expansibility. A new cal- 
culation was necessary to resolve these last questi- 
ons ; the means did not escape him, and mechanics 
at present form a science of pure calculation. 

These discoveries belong :o the mathematical 
sciences ; but the nature of the law of universal 
gravitation, or of these principles of mechanics, 
and the consequences which may thence be drawn 
and applied to the eternal order of the universe, 
belong to philosophy. We learn that all bodies are 
subject to necessary laws, which tend of themselves 
to produce or maintain an equilibrium which caus- 
es, or preserves the regularity of their motions. 

The knowledge of those laws which govern 
the celestial phenomena, the discoveries of that 
matheir.adcai analysis which leads to the most pre- 
! cise methods of calculating the appearances, the 
very unexpected degree of perfection to which op- 
tical and goniometrical instruments have been 
brought, the precision of machines for measuring 
time, the more general taste for the sciences, 

ich unites itself with the interest of governments, 
to multiply the number of astronomers and obser- 

ons ; all these causes unite to secure the pro- 
onomy. 

The heavens are enriched for the man of sci- 
ence with new stars, and he applies his knowledge 
to determine and foretel with accuracy their positi- 
ons and movements. Natural philosophy, gradu- 
ally delivered from the vague explanations of Des- 
cartes, in the same manner as it before was disem- 
barrassed from the absuru tics oi the schools, is now 
nothing more than the art of interrogating 

sriment, for the purpose of 
Iducing moi e g ncral facts by computatk 



1 84 

The weight of the air is known and measured : 
it is known that the transmission of light is not in- 
stantaneous ; its velocity is determined, with the 
effects which must result from that velocity, as to 
the apparent position of the celestial bodies ; and 
the decomposition of the solar rays into others of 
different refrangibility and color. The rainbow is 
explained, and the methods of causing its colors 
to be produced or to disappear are subjected to cal- 
culation. Electricity, formerly considered as the 
property of certain substances only, is now known 
to be one of the most general phenomena in the 
universe. The cause of thunder is no longer a se- 
cret ; Franklin has taught the artist to change its 
course, and direct it at pleasure* New instru- 
ments are employed to measure the variations of 
weight and humidity in the atmosphere, and the 
temperature of all bodies. A new science, under 
the name of meteorology, teaches us to know, and 
sometimes to foretell, the atmospheric appearances 
of which it will hereafter disclose to us the un- 
known laws.. 

While we present a sketch of these discove- 
ries, we may remark how much the methods which 
have directed philosophers in their researches ara 
simplified and brought to perfection ; how greatly 
the art of making experiments, and of construct 
ing instruments, has successively become more ac- 
curate ; so that philosophy is not only enriched eve- 
ry day with new truths, but the truths already 
known have been more exactly ascertained ; so that 

only an immense mass of new facts have been 

d and analysed, but the whole has been 

s milled in detail to methods of greater strict- 

Natural philosophy has been obliged to com- 
with the prejudices. of the schools, and the at- 



.ra 

z 



,8 5 



traction of general hypothesis, so seducing to in- 
dolence. Other obstacles retarded the progress of 
chemistry. It was imagined that this science 
ought to afford the secret of making gold, and that 
of rendering man immortal. 

The effect of great interests, is to render man 
superstitious. It was not supposed that such pro- 
mises, which flatter the two strongest passions of 
vulgar minds, and besides rouse that of acquiring 
glory, could be accomplished by ordinary means ; 
and every thing which credulity or folly could ever 
invent of extravagance, seemed to unite in the 
minds of chemists. 

But these chimeras gradually gave place to the 
mechanical philosophy of Descartes, which in its 
turn gave place to a chemistry truly experimental. 
The observation of those facts which accompany 
j mutual composition and decomposition of bo- 
dies, the research into the laws of these operations, 
th the analysis of substances into elements of 

ater simplicity, acquire a degree of precision 
and strictness ever increasing. 

But to these advances of chemistry we must 

others, which embrace the whole system of the 

science, and rather by extending the methods than 

immediately increasing the mass of truths, foretel 

and prepare a revolution of the happiest kind 

cen the discovery of new means of con- 
:^d examining those elastic fluids, which for- 
merly v/ere suffered to escape ; a discovery which, 
:rate upon an en lire Class of 
new principles, and upon those aire; own, re- 

duced to. a state which escaped our researches, 
by adding an < .the mo 

combination, has changed, as it v/ere, the wl: 

of chemistry. Such has e forma- 

1 of a language, in which the i 



i86 

bstances sometimes express the resemblance or 
differences of those which have a common element, 

and sometimes the class to which they belong 

To these advantages we may add the use of a sci- 
entific method, wherein these substances are repre- 
sented by characters analytically combined, and 
moreover capable of expressing the most common 

operations and the general laws of affinity 

And, again, this science is enriched by the use of 
all the means and all the instruments which philo- 
sophers have applied to compute with the utmost 
rigor the results of experiment ; and lastly, by the 
application of the mathematics to the phenomena 
of chrystalization, and to the laws according to 
which the elements of certain bodies effect in their 
combination regular and constant forms. 

Men who long had possessed no other know- 
ledge than that of explaining by superstitious or 
philosophical reveries the formation of the earth, 
before they endeavored to become acquainted with 
its pans, have at last perceived the necessity of 
studying with the most scrupulous attention the 
surface of the ground, the internal parts of the 
earth into which necessity has urged men to pene- 
trate, the substances there found, their fortuitous 
or regular distribution, and the disposition of the 
masses they have formed by their union. They 
halve learned to ascertain the effects of the slow 
and long continued action of the waters of the sea, 
of rivers, and the effect of volcanic fires ; to dis 
tinguisfi those parts of the surface and exterior 
crust of the globe, of which the inequalities, dis 
position, and lrc quently the materials themselves, 
are the«work of .these agents ; from the other por- 
tion of the surface, formed for the most part 02 
heterogeneous substances, bearing the marks oi 
more ancient revolutions by agents with which we 
are yet unacquainted. 



iS? 



Minerals, vegetables, and animals are divi- 
ded into various species, of which the individuals 
differ by insensible variations scarcely constant, or 
produced by causes purely local. Many of these 
species resemble each other by a greater or less 
number of common qualities, which serve to es- 
tablish successive divisions regularly more and 
more extended. Naturalists have invented methods 
of classing the objects of science from determinate 
characters easily ascertained, the only means of 
avoiding confusion in the midst of this numberless 
multitude of individuals. These methods are, in- 
deed, a real language, wherein each object is denot- 
ed by some of its most constant qualities, which, 
when known, are applicable to the discovery of the 
name which the article may bear in common lan- 
guage. These general languages, when well com- 
posed, likewise indicate, in each class of natural 
objects, the truely essential qualities which by their 
union cause a more or less perfect resemblance in 
the rest of their properties. 

We have formerly seen the effects of that pride 
which magnifies in the eyes of men the objects of 
an exclusive study, and knowledge painfully ac- 
quired, which attaches to these methods an exag- 
gerated degree of importance, and mistakes for 
science itself that which is nothing more than the 
dictionary and grammar of its real language. And 
so likewise, by a contrary excess, we have seen 
philosophers falsely degrade these same methods, 
and confound them with arbitrary nomenclatures, 
as futile and laborious compilations. 

The chemical analysis of the substances in the 
three great kingdoms of nature ; the description of 
their external form ; the exposition of their physi- 
cal qualities and usual properties ; the history of 

Q 



x88 

the ^deyelcpement of organized bodies, animals, 
or plants ; their nutrition and reproduction ; the 
details of their organization ; the anatomy of their 
various parts ; the functions of each ; the history 
of the manners of animals and their industry to 
procure food, defence, and habitation, or to seize 
their prey, or escape from their enemies ; the soci- 
eties of family or species which are formed amongst 
them ; that great mass of truth to which we are led 
by meditating on the immense chain of organized 
beings ; the relation which successive years pro- 
duce from brute matter at the most feeble degree 
of organization, from organized matter to that 
which affords the first indications of sensibility and 
spontaneous motion ; and from this station to that 
of man himself ; the relation of all these beings 
with him, whether relative to his wants, the analo- 
gies which bring him nearer to them, or the diffe- 
rences by which he is separated ; such is the 
sketch presented to the mind by modern natural 
history. 

The physical man is himself the object of a se» 
parate science, anatomy, which, in its general ac- 
ceptation, includes physiology. This science, 
which a superstitious respect for the dead had re- 
tarded, has taken advantage of the general disap- 
pearance of prejudice, and has happily opposed 
the interest of the preservation of man, which has 
secured it the patronage of men of eminence. Its 
progress lias been such, that it seems in some sort 
to be at a stand, in the expection of more perfect 
instruments and new methods. It is nearly reduc- 
4 ed to seek in the comparative anatomy ol the parts 
of animals and man, in the organs common to the 
different species, and the manner in which they ex- 
ercise similar functions, those truths which the 
direct observation of the human frame appears to 



189 

refuse. Almost every thing which the eye of the 
observer, assisted by the microscope, has been able 
to discover, is already ascertained. Anatomy ap- 
pears to stand in need of experiments, so useful to 
the progress of other sciences ; but the nature of 
its object deprives it of this means, so evidently 
necessary to its perfection. 

The circulation of the blood was long since 
known ; but the disposition of the vessels which 
conveyed the chyle to mix with it, and repair its 
losses ; the existence of a gastric fluid which dispo- 
ses the elements to the decomposition necessary to 
separate from organized matter, that portion which 
is proper to become assimilated with living fluids ; 
the changes undergone by the various parts and or- 
gans in the interval between conception and birth, 
and afterwards during the different ages of life ; 
the distinction between the parts possessing sensi- 
bility and those in which irritability only resides, r. 
property discovered by Haller, and common to al- 
most every organic substance : these facts are the 
whole of what physiology has been enabled to disco- 
ver, by indubitable observations, during this brilli- 
ant epoch ; and these important truths may serve 
as an apology for the numerous explanations, me- 
chanical, chemical, and organical, which have suc- 
ceeded each other, and loaded this science with hy- 
potheses destructive to its progress, and danger- 
ous when used as the ground of medical practice. 
To the outline of the sciences we may add that of 
the arts, which, being founded upon them, have 
advanced with greater certainty, and broken the 
shackles of custom and common ; - which 

heretofore impeded their progress. 

We may shew the influence which I 
of mechanics, of astronomy, of optics, and of the 
art of measuring time, has exercised on the art 



constructing, moving, and directing vessels at sea* 
We may shew how greatly an increase of the 
number of observers, and a great degree of accu- 
racy in the astronomical determinations of positi- 
ons, and in topographical methods, have at last 
produced an acquaintance with the surface of the 
globe, of which so little was known at the end of 
the last century. 

How greatly the mechanic arts, properly so 
called, have given perfection to the processes of 
art in constructing instruments and machines in the 
practice of trade, and these last have no less ad- 
ded force to rational mechanism and philosophy. 
These arts are also greatly indebted to the employ- 
ment of first movers already known, with less cf 
txpence and loss, as well as to the invention of new 
principles of motion. 

We have beheld architecture extend its resear- 
ches into the science of equilibriums and the theo- 
ry of fluids, for the means of giving the most com- 
modious and least expensive form to arches, with- 
out fear of altering their solidity; and to oppose 
against the effort of water a resistance computed 
with greater certainty; to direct the course of that 
fluid, and to employ it in canals with greater skill' 
and success. 

We have beheld the arts dependant on chymis- 
try enriched with new processes ; the ancient me- 
thods have been simplified, and cleared from use- 
less or obnoxious substances, and from absurd or 
imperfect practices introduced from former rude 
trials ; means have been invented to avert those 
frequently terrible dangers to which workmen were 
exposed. Thus it is that the application of science 
has secured to us more riches and enjoyment, with 
much less of painful sacrifice or of regret, 






In the mean time, chemistry, botany, and na- 
tural history, have very much enlightened the eco- 
nomical arts, and the culture of vegetables destin- 
ed to supply our wants ; such as the art of support- 
ing, multiplying, and preserving domestic animals ; 
the bringing their races to perfection, and melio- 
rating their products ; the art of preparing and pre- 
serving the productions of the earth, or those ar- 
ticles which are of animal product. 

Surgery and pharmecy have become almost 
new arts, from the period when anatomy and che- 
mistry have offered them more enlightened and 
more certain direction. 

The art of medicine, for in its practice it must 
be considered as an art, is by this means delivered 
at least of its false theories, its pedantic jargon, its 
destructive course of practice, and the servile sub- 
mission to the authority of men, or the doctrine of 
colleges ; it is taught to depend only on experience. 
The means of^this art have become multiplied, and 
their combination and application better known ; 
and though it may be admitted that in some parts 
its progress is merely of a negative kind, that is 
to say, in the destruction of dangerous practices 
and hurtful prejudices, yet the new methods of 
studying chemical medicine, and of combining ob- 
servations, give us reason to expect more real and 
certain advances,, 

We may endeavor more especially to trace that 
practice of genius in the sciences which at one 
time descends from an abstract and profound theo- 
ry to learned and delicate applications ; at another, 
simplifying its means, and proportioning them to its 
wants, concludes by spreading its advantages thro* 
the most ordinary practices ; and at others again 
being rouzed by the wants of this sum: course of 

Q2 



K£2 

art, it plunges into the most remote speculations, 
in search of resources which the ordinary state of 
our knowledge must have refused, 

We may remark that those declamations which 
are made against the utility of theories, even in 
the most simple arts, have never shewn any thing 
but the ignorance of the declaimers. We may prove 
that it is not to the profundity of these theories, 
but, on the contrary, to their imperfection, that we 
ought to attribute the inutility or unhappy effects of 
so many useless applications. 

These observations will lead us to one general 
truth, that in all the arts the results of theory are 
necessarily modified in practice ; that certain sour- 
ces of inacuracy exist, which are really inevitable, 
of which our aim should be to render the effect in- 
sensible, without indulging the chimerical hope of 
removing them; that a great number of data rela- 
tive to our wants, our means, our time, and our 
expences which are necessarily overlooked in the 
theory, must enter into the relative problem of im- 
mediate and real practice ; and that, lastly by in- 
troducing these requisites with that skill which 
truly constitutes the genius of the practical man, 
we may at the same time go beyond the narrow li- 
mits wherein prejudice against theory threatens to 
detain the arts, and prevent those errors into which 
an improper use of theory might lead us. 

Those sciences which are remote from each 
other, cannot be extended without bringing them 
nearer, and forming points of contact between 
them. 

An exposition of the progress of each science 
is sufficient to shew, that in several the intermedi- 
ate application of numbers has been useful, as, in 
almost all, it has been employed to give a greater 
degree of precision to experiments and observati- 



ons ; and that the sciences are indebted to 
nics which has supplied them with more perfect 
and more accurate instruments. How much h 
the discovery of microscopes, and of meteorolo- 
gical instruments contributed to the perfection of 
natural history. How greatly is this science indebt- 
ed to chemistry, which, alone, has been sufficient 
to lead to a more profound knowledge of the ob- 
jects it considers, by displaying their most intimate 
nature, and most essential properties .by shew- 
ing their composition and elements ; while natural 
history offers to chymistry so many operations to 
execute, such a numerous set of combinations 
formed by nature,, the true elements of which re- 
quire to be separated, and sometimes discovered, 
by an imitation of the natural processes : and, last- 
ly, how great is the mutual assistance afforded to 
each other by chymistry and natural philosophy ; 
and how greatly have anatomy and natural history 
been already benefitted by these sciences. 

But we have yet exposed no more than a small 
portion of the advantages which have been re- 
ceived, or may be expected, from these applicati- 
ons. 

Many geometers have given us general methods 
of deducing, from observa.ions of the empiric laws 
of phenomena, methods which extend to all the 
sciences ; because they are in all cases capable of 
affording us the knowledge of the law of the suc- 
cessive values of the same quantity, for a series of 
instants or positions ; or that law according to 
which they are distributed, or which is followed by 
the various properties and values of a similar quali- 
ty among a given number of objects. 

Applicat, [y proved, that the 

s:ience of combination may be success!", lov- 

ed to dispose observations, ia such a manner, 



1 94 

their relations, results, and sum may with more 
facility be seen. 

The uses of the calculation of probabilities 
foretel how much they may be applied to advance 
the progress of other sciences ; in one case, to de- 
termine the probability of extraordinary facts, and 
to shew whether they ought to be rejected, or whe- 
ther, on the contrary, they ought to be verified ; or 
in calculating the probability of the return of those 
facts which often present themselves in the practice 
of the arts, and are not connected together in an 
order, yet considered as a general law. Such, for 
example, in medicine, is the salutary effect of cer- 
tain remedies, and the success of certain preserva- 
tives. These applications likewise shew us how 
great is the probability that a series of phenomena 
should result from the intention of a thinking be- 
ing ; whether this being depends on other co-exist* 
ent, or antecedent phenomena; and how much 
ought to be attributed to the necessary and un- 
known cause denominated chance, a word the 
sense of which can only be known with precision 
by studying this method of computing. 

The sciences have likewise taught us to ascer- 
tain the several degrees of certainty to which we 
may hope to attain ;. the probability according to 
which we can adopt an opinion, and make it the ba- 
sis of our reasonings, without injuring the rights 
of sound argument, and the rules of our conduct 

without deficiency in prudence, or offence to 

justice. They shew what are the advantages or 
disadvantages of various forms of election, and 
modes of decision dependant on the plurality of 
voices ; the different degrees of probability which 
may result from such proceedings ; the method 
which public interest requires to be followed, ac- 
cording to the nature of each question ; the means 



195 

of obtaining it nearly with certainty, when the de- 
cision is not absolutely necessary, or when the in- 
conveniences of two conclusions being unequal, 
neither of them can become legitimate until be- 
neath this probability ; or the assurance beforehand 
of most frequently obtaining this same probability, 
when, on the contrary, a decision is necessary to 
be made, and the most feeble preponderance of 
probability is sufficient to produce a rule of prac- 
tice. 

Among the number of these applications we 
may likewise state, an examination of the probabi- 
lity of facts for the u c ;e of such as have not the 
power, or means, to support their conclusions up- 
on their own observations ; a probability which re- 
sults either from the authority of witnesses, or the 
connection of those facts with others immediately 
observed. 

How greatly have enquiries into the duration of 
human life, and the influence in this respect of sex, 
temperature, climate, profession, government and 
habitudes of life ; on the morality which results 
from different diseases ; the changes which popula- 
tion experiences ; the extent of the action of dif- 
ferent causes which produce these changes ; the 
manner of its distribution, in each country, accord- 
ing to the age, sex and occupation : how great- 
ly useful have these researches been to st- 
eal knowledge of man, to medicine, and to pu 
economy. 

How extensively have computations of tl 
ture been applied for the establishment of 
ties, tontines accumulating funds, bene' 
and chambers of assurance of every kind. 

Is not the application of numbers also 
ry to that part of the public economy which 
dudes the theory of public measures, of o 



196 

banks and financial operations, and lastly, that of 
taxation, as established by law, and its real distri- 
bution, which so frequently differs, in its effects on 
all parts of the social system. 

What a number of important questions in this 
same science are there, which could not have been 
properly resolved without the knowledge acquired 
in natural history, agriculture, and the philosophy 
of vegetables, which influence the mechanical or 
chemical arts. 

In a word, such has been the general progress 
of sciences, that it may be said there is not one 
which can be considered as to the whole extent of 
its principles and detail, without our being obliged 
to borrow the assistance of all the others. 

In presenting this sketch both of the new facts 
which have enriched the sciences respectively, and 
the advantages derived in each from the application 
cf theories, or methods, which seem to belong 
more particularly to another department of know- 
ledge, we may endeavor to ascertain what is the na- 
ture and the limits of those truths to which obser- 
vation, experience, or meditation, may lead us in 
each science ; we may likewise investigate what it 
is precisely that constitutes that talent of invention 
which is the first faculty of the human mind, and 
is known by the name of gerntis ; by what operati- 
3 the understanding may attain the discoveries it 
pursues, or sometimes be led to others not sought, 
or even possible to have been foretold ; we may 
chew how far the methods which lead to discovery 
may be exhausted, so that science may, in a cer- 
tain respect, be at a stand, till new methods are in- 
vented to afford an additional instrument to genius, 
or to facilitate the use of those which cannot be em- 
ployed without too great a consumption of time ■ 
ue« 



i 9 7 

If we confine ourselves to exhibit the advan- 
tages deduced from the sciences in their immediate 
use or application to the arts, whether for the wel- 
fare of individuals or the prosperity of nations, 
we shall have shewn only a small part of the bene- 
fits they afford. The most important perhaps is, 
that prejudice has been destroyed, and the human 
understanding in some sort-rectified ; after having 
been forced into a wrong direction by absurd ob- 
jects of belief, transmitted from generation to ge- 
neration, taught at the misjudging period of infan- 
cy, and enforced with the terrors of superstition 
and the dread of tyranny. 

All the errors in politics and in morals are 
founded upon philosophical mistakes, which them- 
selves, are connected with physical errors. There 
does not exist any religious system, or supernatu- 
ral extravagance, which is not founded on an ig- 
norance of the laws of nature. The inventors and 
defenders of these absurdities could not foresee 
the successive progress of the human mind. Be- 
ing persuaded that the men of ihur time knew 
every thing they would ever know, and would al- 
ways believe that in which they then had fixed their 
faith ; they confidently built their reveries upon the 
general opinions of their own country and their 
own age. ^ 

The progress of natural knowledge is yet mere 
destructive of these errors, because it frequently 
destroys them without seeming to attack them, by 
attaching to those who obstinately defend them the 
degrading ridicule of ignorance. 

At the same time, the just habit of reasoi 
•on the object of these sciences, the precise ideas 
which their methods afford, and the r.v as- 

certaining or proving the truth, must 1 
lead us to compare the sentiment which fo 



sq8 



*5 



to adhere to opinions founded on these real motives 
of credibility, and that which attaches us to our 
habitual prejudices, or forces us to yield to autho- 
rity. This comparison is sufficient to teach us to 
mistrust these last opinions, to shew that they were 
not really believed, even when that belief was the 

most earnestly and the most sincerely professed 

When this discovery is once made, their destructi- 
on becomes much more speedy and certain. 

Lastly, this progress of the phisical sciences, 
which the passions and interest do not interfere to 
disturb ; wherein it is not thought that birth, pro- 
fession, or appointment have given a right to judge 
what the individual is not in a situation to under- 
stand ; this more certain progress cannot be ob- 
served, unless enlightened men shall search in the 
other sciences to bring them continually together. 
This progress at every step exhibits the model 
they ought to follow; according to which they may 
form a judgment of their own efforts, ascertain the 
falfe steps they may have taken, preserve them- 
selves from pyrrhonism as well as credulity, and 
from a blind mistrust or too extensive submission 
to the authorities even of men of reputation and 
knowledge. 

The metaphisical analysis would, no doubt, 
lead to the same results, bu^/lt would have afford- 
ed only abstract principles. In this method, the 
same abstract principles being put into action, are 
enlightened by example, and fortified by success. 

Until the present epoch, the sciences have 
been the patrimony only of a few ; but they are al- 
ready become common, and the momeni approach- 
es in which their elements, their principles, and 
their most simple^ractice, will become really po- 
pular. Then it will be seen how truelv universal 



i 9 9 

their utility will be In their application to the arts, 
and their influence on the general rectitude of the 
mind. 

We may trace the progress of European nati- 
ons in the instruction of children, or of men ; a 
progress hitherto feeble, if we attend merely to 
the philosophical system of this instruction, which, 
in most parts, is still confined, to the prejudices of 
the schools ; but very rapid if we consider the ex- 
tent and nature of the objects taught, which no 
longer comprehending any points of knowledge 
but such as are real, includes the elements of al- 
most all the sciences ; while men of all descripti- 
ons find in dictionaries, abridgments, and journals 
the information they require, though not always of 
the purest kind. We may examine the degree of 
utility resulting from oral instruction in the scien- 
ces, added to that which is immediately received 
by books and study ; whether any advantage has 
resulted from the labour of compilation having be- 
come a real trade, a means of subsistence, which 
has multiplied the number of inferior works, but 
has likewise multiplied the means of acquiring 
common knowledge to men of small information* 
We may mark the influence which learned socie- 
ties have exercised on the progress of the human 
mind, a barrier which will long be useful to oppose 
! against ignorant, pretenders and false knowledge : 
and lastly, w T e may exhibit the history of the en- 
couragements given by governments to that pro- 
gress, and the obstacles which have often been op- 
, posed to it in the same country and at the same pe- 
iriod. We may shew what prejudices or principles 
of Machiavelism have directed them in this op 
sion to the advances of man towards truth ; what 
views of interested policy, or even public good, 

R 



200 

have directed them when they have appeared, on 
the contrary, to be desirous of accelerating and 
protecting them. 

The picture of the fine arts offers to our view- 
results of no less brilliancy. Music is become, in 
a certain respect, a new art ; while the science of 
combination, and the application of numbers to the 
vibrations of sonorous bodies, and the oscillations 
of the air, have enlightened its theory. The arts 
of design, which formerly passed from Italy to 
Flanders, Spain and France, elevated themselves 
in this last country to the same degree that Italy 
carried them in the preceding epocha ; where they 
have been supported with more reputation than in 
Italy itself. The art of our painters is that of Ra- 
phael and Carrachi. All the means of the art being 
preserved in the schools, are so far from being 
lost, that they have become more extended. Ne- 
vertheless, it must be admitted, that too long a time 
has elapsed without producing a genius which may 
be compared to them, to admit of this long sterility 
being attributed to chance. It is not because the 
means of art are exhausted that great success is real- 
ly become difficult; it is not that nature has refused us 
organs equally perfect with those of the Italians of 
the sixth age ; it is merely to the changes of politics 
and manners that we ought to attribute, not the de- 
cay of the art, but the mediocrity of its producti- 
ons. 

Literary productions (cultivated in Italy with 
less success but without having degenerated) have 
made such progress in the French language, as has 
acquired it the honor of becoming, in some sort, 
the universal language of Europe. 

The tragic art, in the hands of Corneille, Ra- 
cine, and Voltaire, has been raised, by successive 
progress, to a perfection before unknown. The co- 



201 

mic art is indebted to Moliere for having speedily 
arrived to an elevation not yet attained by any 
other people. 

In England, from the commencement of the 
same epoch, and in a still later time in Germany, 
language has been rendered more perfect. The 
art of poetry, as well as that of prose writing, h 
been subjected, though with less docility than in 
France, to the universal rules of reason ; :ure, 

which ought to direct them. These rules arc equal- 
ly true for all languages and all people, though the 
number of men has hitherto been few who have 
succeeded in arriving at the knowledge of them, 
and rising to the just and pure taste which results 
from that knowledge. These rules presided over 
the compositions of Sophocles and Virgil, as well 
as those of Pope and Voltaire ; they taught the 
Greeks and Romans, as well as the French, to be 
struck with the same beauties, and shocked at the 
same faults. We may also investigate what it is in 
each nation that has favoured or retarded the pro- 
gress of these arts ; by what causes the different 
kinds of poetry, or works in prose have attained 
in the different countries a degree of perfection so 
unequal ; and how far these universal rules m 
without offending their own fundamental principles, 
be modified by the manners and opinions of the 
people who are to possess their productions, and 

i by the nature of the uses to which their dif- 
ferent species are designed. Thus, for example, 
a tiv recited before a sn 

spectators, in a theatre of confined extent, cannot 
follow the same practical rules as a tragedv exhibited 
on an immense theatre, in the solemn festivals to 
which the whole people was invited. We may at- 
tempt to shew, that the rules of taste possess the 
same generality and the same constancy, though 



202 

they are susceptible of the same modifications as 
the other laws of the moral and physical universe, 
when it is necessary to apply them to the immediate . 
practice of a common art. 

We may shew how far the art of printing, by 
multiplying and disseminating even those works 
which are designed to be publicly read or recited, 
transmit them to a number of readers incompara- 
bly greater than that of the auditors. We may 
shew how most of the important decisions by nu- 
merous assemblies, haying been determined from 
the previous instruction their members had receiv- 
ed by writing, there must have resulted in the art 
of persuasion among the ancients and among the 
moderns, differences in the rules, analagous to the 
effect intended to be produced and the means em- 
ployed ; and how, lastly, in the different species 
of knowledge, even with the ancients, certain 

works were for perusal only such as those of 

history or philosophy. The facility which the in- 
vention of printing affords, to enter into a more 
extensive detail, and more accurate developement, 
must have likewise influenced the same rules. 

The progress of philosophy and the sciences 
have extended and favoured those of letters, and 
these in their turn have served to render the study 
of the sciences more easy, and philosophy itself 
more popular. They have lent mutual assistance 
to each other, in spite of the efforts of ignorance 

and folly to disunite and render them inimical 

Erudition, which a respect for human authority 
and ancient things seemed to have destined to sup- 
port the cause of hurtful prejudices ; this erudition 
has nevertheless, assisted in destroying them be- 
cause the sciences and philosophy have enlighten- 
ed it with a more legitimate criticism. It already 
knew the method of weighing authorities, and com- 



2Q3 

paring them with each other, but it has at length 
submitted them to the tribunal of reason ; it had 
rejected the prodigies, absurd tales, and facts con- 
trary to probability ; but, by attacking the testimo- 
ny upon which they were supported, men have 
learned to reject diem, in spite of the foice of these 
witnesses, that they might give way to that evi- 
dence which the physical or moral improbability of 
extraordinary facts might carry with them. 

Hence it is seen that all the intellectual occu- 
pations of men, however differing in their object, 
their method, or the qualities of mind which they 
require, have concurred in the progress of human 
reason. It is the same with the entire system of 
the labors of men as with a w r ell-composed work ; 
of which the parts, though methodically distinct, 
must, nevertheless, be closely connected to form 
one sigle whole, and tend to one single object. 

While we thus take a general view of the hu- 
man species, w T e may prove that the discovery of 
true methods in all the sciences ; the extent of the 
theory they include ; their application to all the ob- 
jects of nature, and all the wants of man; the lines 
of communication established between them ; th^ 
great number of those who cultivate them; and, 
lastly, the multiplication of printing presses, i 
sufficient to assure us, that none of them w r ill here- 
after descend below the point to which it has been 
carried. We may shew that the principles of phi- 
phy, the maxims of liberty, the knowledge of 
true rights of man, and his real interest, are 
spread over too many nations, and in each of those 
cms direct the opinions of too great a number 
nlightened men, for them ever to fall again in- 
liviori, 

be entertained when \ 
R 2 



2C4 

that the two languages the most universally extend- 
ed, are, likewise, the languages of two people who 
possess the most extended liberty ; who have best 
known its principles. So that no confederacy of 
tyrants, nor any possible combination of policy, can 
prevent the rights of reason, as well as those of li- 
berty, from being openly defended in both lan- 
guages. 

But if it be true, as every prospect assures us, 
that the human race shall not again relapse into its 
ancient barbarity ; if every thing ought to assure 
us against that pusillanimous and corrupt system 
which condemns man to eternal oscillations between 
truth and falsehood, liberty and servitude, we must, 
at the same time, perceive that the light of infor- 
mation is spread over a small part only of our 
globe ; and the number of those who possess real 
instruction, seems to vanish in the comparison with 
the mass of men consigned over to ignorance and 
prejudice. We behold vast countries groaning un- 
der slavery, and presenting nations in one place, 
degraded by the vices of civilization, so corrupt as 
to impede the progress of' man ; and in others, 
still vegitating in the infancy of its early age. We 
perceive that the exertions of these last ages have 
done much for the progress of the human mind, 
but little for the perfection of the human species ; 
much for the glory of man, somewhat for his liber- 
ty, but scarcely any thing yet for his happiness. In 
a few directions, our eyes are struck with a daz- 
zling light ; but thick darkness still covers an im- 
mense horizon. The mind of the philosopher re- 
poses with satisfaction upon a small number of ob- 
jects, but the spectacle of the stupidity, the slave- 
ry, the extravagance, and the barbarity of man, 
afflicts him still more strongly. The friend of hu- 
manity cannot receive unmixed pleasure *but by 






205 

abandoning himself to the endearing hope of the 
future. 

Such are the objects which ought to enter into 
an historical sketch of the progress of the human 
mind. We may endeavor, while we hold them for- 
ward, to shew more especially the influence of this 
progress upon the opinions and the welfare of the 
general mass of different nations, at the different 
epochas of their political existence ; to shew what 
truths they have known, what errors have been de- 
stroyed, what virtuous habits contracted, what new 
developement of their faculties has established a 
happier proportion between their powers and their 
w r ants : And, under an opposite point of view, what 
may be the prejudices to which they have been en- 
slaved ; what religious or political superstiti- 
ons have been introduced ; by w r hat vices, of igno- 
rance or despotism, they have been corrupted ; and 
to what miseries, violence or their own degrada- 
tion have subjected them. 

Hitherto, political history, as well as tha 
philosophy and the sciences, has been merely the 
history of a few men. That which forms in truth 
the human species, the mass of families, which sub- 
sist almost entirely upon their labor, has been for- 
gotten ; and even among that class of men who, 
devoted to public professions, act noc for them- 
selves but for society ; whose occupation it is to in- 
struct, to govern, to defend, and to comfort other 
men, the chiefs only have fixed the attention of 
historians. 

It is enough for the history of individuals that 
: collected, but the history of a mass of men 
can be founded only on observations ; and, in order 
t them, and to seize the essential traits, it 
is r the historian should possess considera- 

ble information, and no less of philosophy? to make 
a proper use of them. 



ao6 

Again, these observations relate to common 
things, which strike the eyes of all, and which eve- 
ry one is capable himself of knowing when he 
thinks proper to attend to them. Hence the great- 
er part have been collected by travellers and fo- 
reigners, because things very trivial in the place 
where they exist, have become an object of curi- 
osity to strangers. Now it unfortunately happens, 
that these travellers are almost always inaccurate 
observers ; they see objects with too much rapidity, 
through the medium of the prejudices of their own 
country, and not unfrequently by the eyes of the 
men of the country they run through : their con- 
ferences are held with such men as accident has 
connected them with ; and the answer is in almost 
every case, dictated by interest, party spirit, na- 
tional pride, or ill-humor. 

It is not alone, therefore, to the baseness of 
historians, as has been justly urged against those 
of monarchies, that we are to attribute the want of 
monuments from which we may trace this most 
important part of the history of men. 

The defect cannot be supplied but very imper- 
fectly by a knowledge of the laws, the practical 
principles of government and public economy, or 
by that of religion and general prejudices. 

In fact, the law as written, and the law as exe- 
cuted ; the principles of those w T ho govern, and the 
manner in which their action is modified by the ge- 
nius of those who are governed ; the institution such 
as it has flowed from the men who formed it, and 
such as it becomes when realized by practice ; the 
religion of books, and that of the people ; the ap- 
parent universality of prejudice, and the real re- 
ception which it obtains, may differ to such a de- 
gree, that the effects shall absolutely cease to cor- 
respond to these public and known causes, 



167 

To this part of the history of the human spe- 
cies, which is the most obscure, the most neglect- 
ed, and for which facts offer us so few materials, it 
is that we should more particularly attend in this 
outline ; and whether an account be rendered of a 
new discovery, an important theory, a new system 
of laws, or a political revolution, the problem to 
be determined will consist in ascertaining what ef- 
fects ought to have arisen from the will of the most 
numerous portion of each society. This is the 
true object of philosophy ; because all the interme- 
diate effects of these same causes can be consider- 
ed only as means of acting, at least upon this por- 
tion, which truly constitute the mass of the human 
race. 

It is by arriving at this last link of the chain, 
that the observation of past events, as well as the 
knowledge acquired by meditation, become truly 
useful. It is by arriving at this term, that men 
learn to appreciate their real titles to reputation, or 
to enjoy, with a well-grounded pleasure, the pro- 
gress of their reason. Hence, alone, it is, that 
they can judge of the true improvement of the hu- 
man species. 

The notion of referring every tiling to this lat- 
ter point, is dictated by justice and by reason ; but 
it may be supposed to be without foundation. The 
supposition, nevertheless, is not true ; and it will 
be enough if we prove it in this place by two strik- 
ing examples. 

The possession of the common objects of con- 
sumption, however abundantly they may now sa- 
tisfy the wants of man ; of those objects which the 
ground produces in consequence of human effort, 
is due to the continued exertions of industry, as- 
sisted by the light of the sciences; and thence it 
follows, from histo this possession attaches 



208 

itself to the gain of the battle of Salaniis, without 
which the darkness of oriental despotism threaten^- 
ed to cover the whole of the earth. And, again, 
the accurate observation of the longitude, which 
preserves navigators from shipwreck, is -indebted 
to a theory w r hich, by a chain cf truths, goes as far 
back as to discoveries mad? :f Plato,. 

buried for twenty c 



2cg 
TENTH EPOCH. 

LE PROGRESS OF MANKIND. 

A F man can predict, almost with certainty, 
arances of which he understands the 
; if, even when the laws are unknown to him, 
expe . le past enables him to foresee, v, 

probability, future appearances ; w 
-appose it a chimerical und 

e of truth, the j i 
. mankind i 
its history r The only foundation of faith in 

-- 

i 

lal and 
of 

Lte to the 



2IO 

Will not every nation one day arrive at the 
state of civilization attained by those people who 
are most enlighted, most free, most exempt from 
prejudices, as the French, for instance, and the 
Anglo-Americans ? Will not the slavery of coun- 
tries subjected to kings, the barbarity of African 
tribes, and the ignorance of savages gradually va- 
nish ? Is there upon the face of the globe a single 
spot the inhabitants of which are condemned by na- 
ture never to enjoy liberty, never to exercise their 



reason 



? 



Does the difference of knowledge, of means, 
and of wealth, observable hitherto in all civilized 
nations, between the classes into which the people 
constituting those nations are divided ; does that 
inequality, which the earliest progress of society 
has augmented, or, to speak more properly, pro- 
duced, belong to civilization itself, or to the im- 
perfections of the social order? Must it not conti- 
nually weaken, in order to give place to that actual 

ality, the chief end of the social art, which di- 
minishing even the effects of the natural difference 
of the faculties, leaves no other inequality subsist- 
ing but what is useful to the interest of all, because 
it will favor civil) zion, insructicn, and industry, 
without drawing after it either dependence, humi- 
liation or poverty ? In a word, will not- men be con- 
tinually verging towards that state, in which all will 

sess the requisite knowledge for conducting 
themselves in the common affairs of life by their 
own reason, and of maintaining that reason un con- 
taminated by prejudices ; in which they will under- 
stand their rights, and exercise them according to 
their opinion and their conscience ; in w T hich all will 
he able, by the developement of their faculties, to 
procure the certain means of providing for their 
wants ; lastly, in which folly and wTctchedness 



121 1 

will be accidents, happening only now and then, 
and not the habitual lot of a considerable portion of 
society ? 

In fine, may it not be expected that the human 
race will be meliorated by new discoveries in the 
sciences and the arts, and, as an unavoidable con- 
sequence, in the means of individual and general 
prosperity; by farther progress in die principles of 
conduct, and in moral practice ; and lastly, by the 
real improvement of our faculties, moral, intellec- 
tual and physical, which may be the result either of 
the improvement of the instruments which increase 
the power and direct the exercise of those faculties, 
or of the improvement of our natural organization 
itself? 

In examining the three questions we have enu- 
merated, we shall find the strongest reasons to be- 
lieve, from past experience, from observation of 
the progress which the sciences and civilization have 
hitherto made, and from the analysis of the march 
of the human understanding, and the developement 
of its faculties, that nature has fixed no limits to 
our hopes. 

If we take a survey of the existing state of 
the globe, we shall perceive, in the first place, that 
in Europe the principles of the French constitution 
are those of every enlightened mind. We shall 
perceive that they are too widely disseminated, and 
too openly professed, for the efforts of tyrants and 
priests to prevent them from penetrating by degrees 
into the miserable cottages of their slaves, where 
they will soon revive those embers of good sense, 
and rouse that silent indignation which the habit of 
suffering and terror have failed totally to extinguish 
in the minds of the oppressed. 

If we next look at the different nations, we shall 
observe in each, particular obstacles opposing, or 

S 



2,12 

certain dispositions favouring this revolution. We 
shall distinguish some in which it will be effected, 
perhaps slowly, by the wisdom of the respective 
governments ; and others in which, rendered vio- 
lent by resistance, the governments themselves will 
necessarily be involved in its terrible and rapid mo- 
tions. 

Can it be supposed that either the wisdom or 
the senseless feuds of European nations, co-ope- 
rating with the slow but certain effects of the pro- 
gress of their colonies, will not shortly produce the 
independence of the entire new world ; and that 
then, European population, lending its aid, will 
fail to civilize or cause to disappear, even without 
conquest, those savage nations still occupying there 
immense tracts of country. 

Run through the history of our projects and 
establishments in Africa or in Asia, and you will 
see our monopolies, our treachery, our sanguinary 
contempt for men of a different complexion or dif- 
ferent creed, and the proselyting fury or the in- 
trigues of our priests, destroying that sentiment of 
respect and benevolence which the superiority of 
our information and the advantages of our com- 
merce had at first obtained. 

But the period is doubtless approaching, when, 
no longer exhibiting to the view of these people 
corrupters only or tyrants, we shall become to them 
instruments of benefit, and the generous champi- 
ons of their redemption from bondage. 

The cultivation of the sugar cane, which is 
now establishing itself in Africa, will put an end 
to the shameful robbery by which, for two centu- 
ries, that country has been depopulated and de- 
praved. 

"^Already, in Great Britain, some friends of 
humanity have set the example ; and if its Machi- 



21 J 

avelian government, forced to respect public r< 

son, had not dared to oppose this measure, v 
may we not expect from the same spirit, when, af- 
ter the reform of an object and venal constitution, 
it shall become worthy of a humane and generous 
people ? Will not France be eager to imitate enter- 
prizes which the philanthropy and the true interest 
of Europe will equally have dicjated ? Spices are 
already introduced into the French islands, Guia- 
na, and some English settlements ; and we shall 
soon witness the fall of that monopoly which the 
Dutch have supported by such a complication of 
perfidy, of oppression, and of crimes. The peo- 
ple of Europe will learn in time that exclusive and 
chartered companies are but a tax upon the respec- 
tive nation, granted for the purpose of placing a 
new instrument in the hands of its government for 
the maintenance of tyranny. 

Then will the inhabitants of the European quar- 
ter of the world, satisfied with an unrestricted com- 
merce, too enligtened as to their own rights to 
sport with the rights of others, respect that inde- 
pendence which they have hitherto violated with 
such audacity. Then will their establishments, in- 
stead of being filled by the creatures of pc 
who, availing themselves of a place or priviledge, 
hasten, by rapine and perfidy, to amass wealth, in 
order to purchase, on their return, honors and ti- 
tle:-, be peopled with industrious, men, seckin g in 
those happy climates that ease and comfort 
in th ive country eluded their pursuit. Th 

will they be retained by liberty, ambition 
lost its allurements ; and those settl 
bers will then become colonies of ( 
whom will be planted in Africa and Asia th 
ciples and example of the freedom, H 
illumination of .. r fo those monks also, 



214 

who inculcate on the natives of the countries in 
question the most shameful superstitions only, and 
who excite disgust by menacing them with a new 
tyranny, will succeed men of integrity and bene- 
volence, anxious to spread among these people 
truths useful to their happiness, and to enlighten 
them upon their interests as well as their rights : 
for the love of truth is also a passion ; and when it 
shall have at home no gross prejudices to combat, 
no degrading errors to dissipate, it will naturally 
extend its regards, and'convey its efforts to remote 
and foreign climes. 

These immense countries will afford am pi 
scope for the gratification of this passion. In on 
place will be found a numerous people, who, to ar- 
rive at civilization,, appear only to wait till we shall 
furnish them with the means ; and, who, treated as 
brothers by Europeans, would instantly become 
their friends and disciples. In another will be seen 
nations crouching under the yoke of sacred des- 
pots or stupid conquerors, and who, for so many 
ages have looked for some friendly hand to deliver 
them : while a third will exhibit either tribes near- 
ly savage, excluded from the benefits of superior 
civilization by the severity of their climate, which 
deters those who might otherwise be disposed to 
communicate these benefits from making the at- 
tempt ; or else conquering hordes, knowing no law 
but force, no trade but robbery. The advances 
of these two last classes will be more slow, and ac- 
companied with more frequent storms ; it may even 
happen that, reduced in numbers in proportion as 
they see themselves repelled by civilized nations, 
they will in the end wholly disappear, or their 
scanty remains become blended with their neigh- 
bors. 



e 



"5 

We might shew that these events will be the 
inevitable consequence not only of the progress of 
Europe, but of that freedom which the republic 
of France, as well as of America, have it in their 
power, and feel it to be their interest, to restore to 
the commerce of Africa and Asia : and that they 
must also necessarily result alike, whether from 
the new policy of European nations, or their obsti- 
nate adherence to mercantile prejudices, t 

A single combination, a new invasion of Asia 
by the Tartars, might be sufficient to frustrate this 
revolution ; but it may be shewn that such combi- 
nation is henceforth impossible to be effected 

Meanwhile every thing seems to be preparing the 
speedy downfall of the religions of the East, which 
partaking of the abjectness of their ministers, left 
almost exclusively to the people, and, in the ma- 
jority of countries, considered by powerful men as 
political institutions only, no longer threaten to re- 
tain human reason in a state of hopeless bondage, 
and in the eternal shakles of infancy. 

The march of these people will be less slow 
and more sure than ours has been, because thev 
will derive from us that light which we have 
been obliged to discover, and because for them 
to acquire the simple truths and infallible me- 
thods which we have obtained after long wandering 
in the mazes of error, it will be sufficient to seize 
upon their developements and proofs in our dis- 
courses and publications. If the progress of the 
Greeks was lost upon other nations, it was for want 
of a communication between the people ; and to 
the tyrannical domination of the Romans must the 
whole blame be ascribed. But, when mutual wants 
shall have drawn closer the intercourse and tics of 
all mankind j when the most powerful nations shall 

S 2 



lib- 






have established into political principles equality 
between societies as between individuals, and re- 
spect for the independence of feeble states, as well 
as compassion for ignorance and wretchedness ; 
when to the maxims which bear heavily upon the 
spring of the human faculties, those shall succeed 
which favor their action and energy, will there still 
be reason to fear that the globe will contain spaces 
inaccessible to knowledge, or that the pride of des- 
potism will be able to oppose barriers to truth that 
will long be insurmountable. 

Then will arriye the moment in which the sun 
will observe in its course free nations only, acknow- 
ledging no other master than their reason ; in which 
tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hy- 
pocritical instruments, will no longer exist but in 
history and upon the stage ; in which our only con- 
cern will be to lament their past victims and dupes, 
and, by the recollection of their horrid enormities^ 
to exercise a vigilant circumspection, that we may 
be able instantly to recognise and effectually to sti- 
fle by the force of reason, the seeds of superstiti- 
on and tyranny, should they ever presume again to 
make their appearance upon the earth. 

In tracing the history of societies we have had 
occasion to remark, that there frequently exists a 
considerable distinction between the rights which 
the law acknowledges in the citizens of a state, and 
those which they really enjoy ;, between the equali- 
ty established by political institutions, and that 
which takes place between the individual members; 
and that to this disproportion was chiefly owing the 
destruction of liberty in the ancient republics, the 
storms which they had to encounter, and the weak- 
ness that surrendered them into the power of fo- 
reign tyrants. 



217 

Three principal causes may be assigned for 
these distinctions : inequality of wealth, inequali- 
ty of condition between him v/hose resources of 
subsistence are secured to himself and descendable 
to his family, and him whose resources are annihi- 
lated with the termination of his life, or rather of 
that part of his life in which he is capable of labour; 
and lastly, inequality of instruction. 

It will therefore behove us to shew, that these 
three kinds of real inequality must continually di- 
minish ; but without becoming absolutely extinct, 
since they have natural and necessary causes, which 
it would be absurd as well as dangerous to think 
of destroying ; nor can we attempt even to destroy 
Entirely their effects, without opening at the same 
time more fruitful sources of inequality, and giv- 
ing to the rights of man a more direct and more 
fatal blow. 

It is easy to prove that fortunes naturally tend 
to equality, and that their extreme disproportion 
either could not exist, or would quickly cease, if 
positive law had not introduced factitious means of 
amassing and perpepuating them ; if an entire 
freedom of commerce and industry were brought 
forward to superscede the advantages which prohi- 
batory laws and fiscal rights necessarily give to the 
rich over the poor ; if duties upon every sort of 
transfer and convention, if prohibitions to certain 
kinds, and the tedious and expensive formalities 
prescribed to other kinds ; if the uncertainty and 
expence attending their execution had not palsied 
the efforts of the poor, and swallowed up their lit- 
tle accumulations ; if political institutions had not 
1a id certain prolific sources of opulence open to a 
few, and shut them against the many ; if avarice and 
the other prejudices incident to an advanced a 
did not preside over marriages -, in fine, if the sim* 



2iS 

plicity of our manners and the wisdom of our insti- 
tutions were calculated to } revent riches from ope- 
rating as the means of gratifying vanity or ambiti- 
on, at the same time that an ill-judged austerity, by 
forbidding us to render them a means of costly plea- 
sures should not force us to preserve the wealth that 
had once been accumulated. 

Let us compare, in the enlightened nations of 
Europe, the actual population with the extent of 
territory ; let us observe, amidst the spectacle of 
their culture and their industry, the way in which 
labour and the means of subslstance are distribut- 
ed, and we shall see that it will be impossible to 
maintain these means in the same extent, and of 
consequence to maintain the same mass of populati- 
on> if any considerable number of individuals cease 
to have, as now, nothing but their industry, and the 
pittance necessary to set it at work, or to render 
its profit equal to the supplying their own wants and 
those of their family. But neither this industry, 
nor the scanty reserve we have mentioned, can be 
perpetuated, except so long as the life and health 
of each head of a family is perpetuated. Their 
little fortune therefore is at best an annuity, but in 
reality with features of precariousness that an an- 
nuity wants : and from hence results a most impor- 
tant difference between this class of society and the 
class of men whose resources consist cither of a 
landed income, or the interest of a capital, which 
depends little upon personal industry, and is there- 
fore not subject to similar risks. 

There exists then a necessary cause of inequa- 
lity, of dependence, and even of penury, which 
menaces without ceasing the most numerous and 
active class of our societies. 

Tins inequality, however, may be In great mea- 
sure destroyed, by setting chance against chance.. 



219 

iii securing to him who attains old age a support, 
arising from his savings, but augmented by those 
of other persons, who, making a similar addition 
to a common stock, may happen to die before they 
shall have occasion to recur to it ; in procuring, by 
a like regulation, an equal resource for women who 
may loose their husbands, or children who may 
lose their father ; lastly, in preparing for those 
youths, who arrive at an age to be capable of work- 
ing for themselves, and of giving birth to a new 
family, the benefit of a capital sufficient to em- 
ploy their industry, and encreased at the expence 
of those whom premature death may cut off before 
they arrive at that period. To the application of 
mathematics to the probabilities of life and the in- 
terest of money, are we indebted for the hint of 
these means, already employed with some degree 
of success, though they have not been carried to 
such extent, or employed in such variety of forms, 
as would render them truly beneficial, not merely 
to a few families, but to the w T hole mass of society, 
which would thereby be relieved from that periodi- 
cal ruin observable in a number of families, the 
ever-flowing source of corruption and depravity. 

These establishments, which may be formed 
in the name of the social power, and become one of 
its greatest benefits, might also be the result of in- 
dividual associations, which may be instituted with- 
out danger, when the principles by which the esta- 
blishments ought to be organised, shall have be- 
come more popular, and the errors, by which a 
great number of such associations have been de- 
stroyed, shall cease to be an object of apprehen- 
sion. 

We may enumerate other means of securing 
the equality in question, either by preventing cre- 
dit from continuing to be a privilege exclusively at- 



220 

tached to large fortunes, without at the same timer 
placing it upon a less solid foundation ; or by ren- 
dering the progress of industry and the activity of 
commerce more independent of the existence of 
great capitalists : and for these resources also we 
shall be indebted to the science of calculation. 

The equality of instruction we can hope to at- 
tain, and with which we ought to be satisfied, is that 
which excludes every species of dependence, whe- 
ther forced or voluntary. We may exhibit, in the 
actual state of human knowledge, the easy means 
by which this end may be attained even for those 
who can devote to study but a few years of infan- 
cy, and, in subsequent life, only some occasional 
hours of leisure. We might shew, that by a hap- 
py choice of the subjects to be taught, and of the 
mode of inculcating them, the entire mass of a 
people may be instructed in every thing necessary 
for the purposes of domestic economy ; for the 
transaction of their affairs ; for the free develope- 
ment of their industry and their faculties ; for the 
knowledge, exercise and protection of their rights ; 
for a sense of their duties, and the power of dis- 
charging them ; for the capacity of judging both 
their own actions, and the actions of others, by 
their own understanding ; for the acquisition of all 
the delicate or dignified sentiments that are an ho- 
nor to humanity ; for freeing themselves from a 
blind confidence in those to whom they may en- 
trust the care of their interests, and the security of 
their rights ; for chusing and watching over them, 
so as no longer to be the dupes of those popular 
errors that torment and way -lay the life of man 
with superstitious fears and chimerical hopes ; for 
defending themselves against prejudices by the sole 
energy of reason ; in fine, for escaping from the 
delusions of imposture, which would spread snares 



221 

For their fortune, their health, their freedom of 
opinion and of conscience, under the pretext of en- 
riching, of healing, and of saving them. 

The inhabitants of the same country being then 
no longer distinguished among themselves by the 
alternate use of a refined or vulgar language ; being 
equally governed by their own understandings ; be- 
ing no more confined to the mechanical knowledge 
of the processes of the arts, and the mere routine 
of a profession; no more dependent in the most 
trifling affairs, and for the slightest information, 
upon men of skill, who, by a necessary assendan- 
cy, controul and govern, a real equality must be 
the result ; since the difference of talents and in- 
formation can no longer place a barrier between 
men whose sentiments, ideas, and phraseology are 
capable of being mutually understood, of whom the 
one part may desire to be instructed, but cannot 
need to be guided by the other ; of whom the one 
part may delegate to the other the office of a rati- 
onal government, but cannot be forced to regard 
them with blind and unlimited confidence. 

Then it is that this superiority will become an 
advantage even for those who do not partake of it 
since it will exist not as their enemy, by as their 
friend. The natural difference of faculties between 
men whose understandings have not been cultivat- 
ed, produces, even among savages, empirics and 
dupes, the one skilled in delusion, the others easy 
to be deceived: the same difference will doubtless 
exist among a people where instruction shall be tru- 
ly general; but it will be here between men of ex- 
alted understandings and men of sound minds, who 
can admire the radiance of knowledge, without suf- 
fering themselves to be dazzled by it ; I ta- 

lents and genius en the onj hand, and on the Otl 
the good sense that knows how to iate and. 

enjoy them: and should this difference be even 



222 

greater in the latter case, comparing the force and 
extent of the faculties only, still would the effects 
of it not be the less imperceptible in the relations 
of men with each other, in whatever is interesting 
to their independence or their happiness. 

The different causes of equality we have enu- 
merated do not act distinctly and apart ; they unite, 
they incorporate, they support one another ; and 
from their combined influence results an action pro- 
portionably forcible, sure, and constant. If in- 
struction become more equal, industry thence ac- 
quires greater equality, and from industry the effect 
is communicated to fortunes ; and equality of for- 
tunes necessarily contributes to that of instruction, 
while equality of nations, like that established be- 
tween individuals, have also a mutual operation 
upon each other. 

In fine, instruction, properly directed, corrects 
the natural inequality of the faculties, instead of 
strengthening it, in like manner as good laws reme- 
dy the natural inequality of the means of subsist- 
ance ; or as, in societies whose institutions shall 
have effected this equality, liberty, though subject- 
ed to a regular government, will be more extensive, 
more complete, than in the independence of sa- 
vage life. Then has the social art accomplished 
its end, that of securing and extending for all the 
enjoyment of the common rights which impartial 
nature has bequeathed to all. 

The advantages that must result from the state 
of improvement, of which I have proved we may 
almost entertain the certain hope, can have no li- 
mit but the absolute perfection of the human spe- 
cies, since, in proportion as different kinds of e- 
quality shall be established as to the various means 
of providing for our wants, as to a more universal 
instruction, and a more entire liberty, the more 
real will be this equality, and the nearer will it ap- 






223 



proach towards embracing every thing truly impor- 
tant to the happiness of mankind. 

It is then by examining the progression and the 
laws of this perfection, that we can alone arrive at 
the knowledge of the extent or boundary of our 
hopes. 

It has never yet been supposed, that all the 
facts of nature, and all the means of acquiring pre- 
cision in the computation and analysis of those facts, 
and all the connections of objects with each other, 
and all the possible combinations of ideas, can be 
exhausted by the human mind. The mere rela- 
tions of magnitude, the combinations, quantity and 
extent of this idea alone, form already a system too 
immense for the mind of man ever to grasp the 
whole of it ; a portion, more vast than that which 
he may have penetrated, will always remain un- 
known to him. It has, however, been imagined, 
that, as man can know a part only of the objects 
which the nature of his intelligence permits him to 
investigate, he must at length reach the point at 
which, the number and complication of those he 
already knows having absorbed all his powers, far- 
ther progress will become absolutely impossible. 

But, in proportion as facts are multiplied, man 
learns to class them, and reduce them to more ge- 
neral facts, at the same time that the instruments 
and methods for observing them, and registering 
them with exactness, acquire a new precision : in 
proportion as relations more multifarious between 
a greater number of objects are discovered, man 
continues to reduce them to relations of a wider 
denomination, to express them widi greater sim- 
plicity, and to , hem in a way which may 
enable a given strength of mind, with a given quan- 
tity of attention, to take in a greater number than 

T 



2 24 

before : in proportion as the understanding em- 
braces more complicated combinations, a simple 
mode of announcing these combinations renders 
them. more easy to be treated. Hence it follows 
that truths, the discovery of which was accompa- 
nied with the most laborious efforts, and which at 
first could not be comprehended but by men of the 
severest attention, will, after a time, be unfolded 

roved in methods that are not above the ef- 
forts of an ordinary capacity. And thus should 
the methods that led to new combinations be ex- 
hausted, should their applications to questions, still 
unresolved, demand exertions greater than the 
time or the powers of the learned can bestow, more 
general methods, means more simple would soon 
come to their aid, and open a farther career to ge- 
nius. The energy, the real extent of the human 
iritelect, may remain the same : but the instruments 
which it can employ will be multiplied and improv- 
ed ; but the language which fixes and determines 
the ideas will acquire more precision and compass ; 
and it will not be here, as in the science of mechan- 
ics, where, to increase the force, we must dimi- 
nish the velocity ; on the contrary, the methods by 
which genius will arrive at the discovery of new 
truths, augment at once both the force and rapidity 
of its operations. 

a word, these changes being themselves the 

sary consequences of additional progress in the' 
knowledge of truths of detail, and the cause which 

lice's a demand for new resourses, producing^ 

2 same time the means of supplying them, it 
follows that the actual mass of truths appertaining 
to the sciences of observation, calculation and ex- 
periment, may be perpetually augmented, and 
without s y the faculties of man to possess a 

force and activity, and a scope of action greater 
than before. 



"■O 



Br applying these general r s to the dif- 

Bt sciences', we might exhibit, cespectm 
examples of this progressive in i«* 

would remove all possibility of c 
taintyof the further im] 
pected. Wc might indicate partic 
which prejudice considers as nearest to bei 
hausted; the marks of an almost certain ai 
advance. We might illustrate the extent, the ; 
bision, the unity which must be added to t 
tem comprehending all human knowledge, by 
more general and philosophical non ol the 

nee of calculation to the individual branches o. 

;h that system is composed. \ 
how favorable to oar hopes a mo 

chagres 
iduals would retheelemen 

ledge that might ire 
ticular kind of study,; and how much 1 

ildbe furth itened if thi into 

stud 

;es. At 

in the most ;ened countries, sc^cely do 

in ffty of tl has Hessed 

lents receive the n< tion for the de- 

velopement of them ; f ould be 

proportion in the case we are supposing ? am 

lence how different the number 

shew how much I 

, would 
it of v. 
in a gre 



trine of meteors ; in short, how infinite the diffe- 
rence between the feeble means hitherto enjoyed by 
these sciences, and which yet have led to useful 
and important truths, and the magnitude of those 
which man would then have it in his power to em- 
ploy. 

Lastly, we might prove that, from the advan- 
tage of being cultivated by a greater number of per- 
sons, even the progress of those sciences, in which 
discoveries are the fruit of individual meditation, 
wculd ; also, be considerably advanced by means 
of minuter improvements, not requiring the strength 
of intellect, necessary for inventions, but that pre- 
: at themselves to the reflection of the least pro- 
found understandings. 

If we pass to the progress of the arts, those 
arts particularly the theory of which depends on 
these very same sciences, we shall find that it can 
have no inferior limits ; that their processes are sus- 
ceptible of the same improvement, the same sim- 
plifications, as the scientific methods ; that instru- 
ments, machines, looms, will add every day to the 
capabiiitiesAid skill of man.. ..will augment at once 
the excellence and precision of his works, while 
they will diminish the time and labor necessary for 
executing them ; and that then will disappear the 
obstacles that still oppose themselves to the pro- 
gress in question, accidents which will be foreseen 
and prevented ; and lastly, the unhealthiness at pre- 
sent attendant upon certain operations, habits and 
climates. 

A smaller portion of ground will then be made 
to produce a proportion of provisions of higher va- 
lue or greater utility ; a greater quantity of enjoy- 
ment will be procured at a smaller expence of con- 
sumption ; the same manufactured or artificial 
commodity will be produced at a smaller expence 



227 

of r trials, or will be stronger and more du- 

r?cblc ; every soil will be appropriated to producti- 
ons which will satisfy a greater number of wants 
with the least labor, and taken in the smallest quan- 
tities. Thus the means of health and frugality 
will be encreased, together with the instruments in 
the arts of production, of curing commodities and 
manufacturing their produce, without demanding 
the sacrifice of one enjojrnent by the consumer. 

Thus, not only the same species of ground will 
nourish a greater number of individuals, but each 
individual, with a less quantity of labor, will la 

ccessfully, and be surrounded with greater 
conveniences. 

It ver, be demanded, whether, a- 

midst this improvement in industry and happiness, 
where v s and faculties of men will continu- 

ally become better proportioned, each successive 
generation possess more various stores, and of con- 
_e in each generation the number of indivi- 

ls be greatly increased ; it may, I say, be de- 

her these principles of in aent 

leir conr rration, 

ultimately lead to degeneracy and destruction? 

abitants in the universe 
at length exceeding the means of existence, there 
will not result a continual decay of happiness and 

ulation, and a progress towards barbarism, or 
at least a sort of oscillation between good and evil ? 

11 not this oscillation, in societies arrived at this 
>urce of period ic al c al am i ty 

distress ? In a word, ( nsidera- 

tions po her im- 

minent t 

irrive at a period which 

- ? 



2lB 

There is, doubtless, no individual that does 
not perceive how very remote from us wi}l be this 
period : but must it one day arrive ? It is equally 
impossible to pronounce on either side respecting 
an event, which can only be realized at an epoch 
when the human species will necessarily have ac- 
quired a degree of knowledge, of which our short- 
sighted understandings can scarcely form an idea. 
And who shall presume to foretel to what perfec- 
tion the art of converting the elements of life into 
substances fitted for our use, may, in a progression 
of ages, be brought ? 

But supposing the affirmative, supposing it ac- 
tually to take place, there would result from it no- 
thing alarming, either to the happiness of the human 
race, or its indefinite perfectibility ; if we consider, 
that, prior to this period, the progress of reason 
v/ill have walked hand in hand with that of the sci- 
ences ; that the absurd prejudices of superstition 
will have ceased to infuse into morality a harshness 
that corrupts and degrades, instead of purifying 
and exalting it ; that men will then know, that the 
duties they may be under relative to propagation 
will consist not in the question of giving exijlence to 
a greater number of beings, but happnefs ; will 
have for their object, the general welfare of the hu- 
man species ; of the society in which they live ; of 
the family to which they are attached ; and not the 
puerile idea of encumbering the earth with useless 
2nd wretched mortals. Accordingly, there might 
then be a limit to the possible mass of provision, 
and of consequence to the greatest possible popula- 
tion, without that premature destruction, so con- 
trary to nature and to social prosperity, of a por- 
tion of the beings who may have received life ? be- 
ing the result of those limits. 



20,9 

As the discovery, or rather the accurate solu- 
tion of the first principles of metaphysics, morals, 
and politics, is still recent ; and as it has been pre- 
ceded by the knowledge of a considerable number 
of truths of detail, the prejudice, that they have 
thereby arrived at theu* highest point of improve- 
ment, becomes easily established in the mind ; and 
men suppose that nothing remains to be done, be- 
cause there arc no longer any gross errors to de- 
stroy, or fundamental truths to establish. 

But it requires little penetration to perceive 
how imperfect is still the developement of the in- 
tellectual and moral faculties of man ; how much 
farther the sphere of his duties, including therein 
the influence of his actions upon the welfare of his 
fellow creatures and of the society to which he be- 
longs, may be extended by a more fixed, a more 
profound and more accurate observation of that in- 
fluence ; how many questions still remain to be 
solved, how many social ties to be examined, be- 
fore we can ascertain the precise catalogue of the 
individual rights of man, as well as of the rights 
which the social state confers upon the whole com- 
munity with regard to each member. Have we 
even ascertained with any precision the limits of 
these rights, whether as they exist between diffe- 
rent societies, or in any single society, over its 
members, in cases of division and hostility ; or, 
in fine, the rights of individuals, their spontaneous 
unions in the case of a primitive formation, or 
their separations when separation becomes neces- 
sary ? 

If we pass on to the theory which ought to di- 
rect the application of these principles, and serve 
as the basis of the social art, do we not see the De- 
nsity of acquiring an exactness of which first 
•Uis, from their general nature, are not 



2J0 

le ? Are we so far advanced as to consider jus- 
lice, or a proved and acknowledged utility and not 
vague, uncertain, and arbitrary views of pretend- 
ed political advantages, as the foundation of all in- 
stitutions of law ? Among the variety, almost in- 
finite, of possible systems, in which the general 
principles of equality and natural rights should be 
ected, have we j r et fixed upon the precise rules 
of ascertaining with certainty those which best se- 
cure the preservation of these rights, which afford 
the free t for their exercise and enjoyment, 

note most effectually the peace and wel- 
fare of individuals, and the strength, repose, and 
prosperity of nations ? 

plication of the arithmetic of combina- 
; obahilkies to these sciences, promises 
an improvement by so much the more considerable,, 
as it is the only means of giving to their results an 
lost mathematical precision, and of appreciating 
ir degree of certainty or of probability. The 
i upon which these results are built may, indeed 
out calculation, and by a glance only, lead to 
some general truths ; teach us whether the effects 
duced by such a cause have been favorable or 
the reverse : but if facts have neither been 

counted nor estimated ; if these effects have not 
been the object of an exact admeasurement, we can- 
judge of the quantity of good or evil they con- 
tain ; if the good or evil nearly balance each other, 
nay, if the diffe e not considerable, we can- 

pronounce with certainty to which side the ba- 
lance inclines. Without the application of this arith- 
dc, it would be almost impossible to chuse, with 
sound reason, between two combinations proposing 
to themselves the same end, when their advantages 
not distinguished by any considerable differ- 
ed In fine, without this alliance, these sc ; 



ces would remain forever gross and narrow, for 
want of instruments of sufficient polish to lay hold 
of the subtility of truth.... for want of machines suf- 
ficiently accurate to sound the bottom of the well 
where it conceals its wealth. 

Meanwhile this application, notwithstanding 
the happy efforts of certain geometers, is still, if I 
may so speak, in its first rudiments ; and to the fol- 
lowing generations must it open a source of intel- 
ligence inexhaustible as calculation itself, or as the 
combinations, analogies, and facts that may be 
brought within the sphere of its operations. 

There is another species of progress, apper- 
taining to the sciences in question, equally impor- 
tant; I mean the improvement of their language, 
at present so vague and so obscure. To this im- 
provement must they owe the advantage of becom- 
ing popular, even in their first elements. Genius 
can triumph over these inaccuracies, as over other 
.obstacles ; it can recognise the features of truth, 
in spite of the mask that conceals or disfigures 
them. But how is the man who can devote but a 
few leisure moments to instruction to do this ? how 
is he to acquire and retain the most simple truths, 
if they be disguised by an inaccurate language ? 
The fewer ideas he is able to collect and combine, 
the more requisite it is that they be just and precise. 
He has no fund of truths stored up in his mind, by 
which to guard himself against error ; nor is his 
understanding so strengthened and refined by long 
exercise, that he can catch those feeble rays of 
light which escape under the obscure and ambi 
ous dress of an imperfect and vicious phraseology. 

It will be impossible for men to become enlight- 
ened upon the nature and developement of their 
moral sentiments, upon the principles of morality, 
upon the iaotives for conforming their conduct to 



23 2 

those principles, and upon their interests, whether 
relative to their individual or social capacity, with- 
making, at the same time an advancement in 
Bbioral practice, not less real than that of the science 
itself. Is not a mistaken interest the most frequent 
cause of actions contrary to the general welfare ? 
Is not the impetuosity our passions the continual 
result, either of habits to which we addict ourselves 
from a false calculation, or of ignorance of the 
means by which to resist their first impulse, to di- 
vert, govern, and direct their action. 

Is not the practice of reflecting upon our con- 
duct ; of trying it by the touchstone of reason and 
conscience; of exercising those humane sentiments 
which I lend our happiness with that of others, the 
necessary consequence of the well directed study 
of morality, and of a greater equality in the conditi- 
ons of the social compact ? Will not that conscious- 
ness of his own dignity, appertaining to the man 
who is free, that system of education built upon a 
more profound knowledge of our moral constituti- 
on, render common to almost every man those prin^ 
cipies of a strict and unsullied justice, those habi- 
tual propensities of an active and enlightened be- 
nevolence, of a delicate and generous sensibility, 
of which nature has planted the seeds in our hearts, 
and which wait only for the genial influence of 
knowledge and liberty to expand and to fructify ? 
In manner as die mathematical and physical scien- 
ces tend to improve the arts that are employed for 
our most simple wants, so is it not equally in the 
. essary order of nature that the moral and poli- 
tic a» sciences should exercise a similar influence up- 
on the motives that direct our sentiments and our 

'What is the object of the improvement of laws 
and public institutions, consequent upon the { 



233 

gress of these sciences, but to reconcile, to approx- 
imate, to blend and unite into one mass the com- 
mon interest of each individual with the common 
interest of all? What is the end of the social art, 
but to destroy the opposition between these two ap- 
parently jarring sentiments ? And will not the con- 
stitution and laws of that country best accord with 

intentions of reason and nature where the prac- 
tice of virtue shall be least difficult, and the tempta- 
tions to deviate from her paths least numerous and 
least powerful. 

What vicious habit can be mentioned, what 
practice contrary to good faith, what crime even, 
the origin and first cause of which may not be trac- 
ed in the legislation, institutions, and prejudic 
of the country in which we observe such habit, 
such practice, or such crime to be committed ? 

In short, does not the well-being, the prosperi- 
ty, resulting from the progress that will be made 
by the useful arts, in consequence of their being 
founded upon a sound theory, resulting, also, from 
an improved legislation, built upon the truths of 
the political sciences, naturally dispose men to hu- 

rity, to benevolence and to justice ? Do not all 
the observations, in fine, which we proposed to 
velope in this work prove, that the mora ess 

of man, the necessary consequence of his organ- 
like all his other faculties, susceptible of 
an indefinite improvement ? and that nature has 
connected, by a chain which cannot be broken, 

tue. 

Among those causes of human improvement 
that arc oi moi c to the general . 

must be included, the total annihilation of tli;: [ 
judices which have eg I betwc 

an inequality of rights, i n to th 

ich it favors. In vain might we mo- 



^34 

lives by which to justify this principle, in differ- 
ence of physical organization, of intellect, or of 
moral sensibility. It had at first no other origin 
but abuse of strength, and all the attempts which 
have since been made to support it are idle so- 
phisms. 

And here we may observe, how much the abo- 
lition of the usages authorised by this prejudice, 
and of the laws which it has dictated, would tend 
to augment the happiness of families ; to render 
common the virtues of domestic life, the fountain- 
head of all the others ; to favor instruction, and 
especially, to make it truly general, either because 
it would be extended to both sexes with greater 
equality, or because it cannot become general, even 
to men, without the concurrence of the mothers 
of families. Would not this homage, so long in 
paying, to the divinities of equity and good sense, 
put an end to a too fertile principle of injustice, 
cruelty, and crime, by superseding the opposition 
hitherto maintained between that natural propensi- 
ty, which is, of all others the most imperious, and 
most difficult to subdue, and the interests of man, 
or the duties of society ? Would it not produce, 
what has hitherto been a mere chimera, national 
manners of a nature mild and pure, formed, not 
by imperious privations, by hypocritical appearan- 
ces, by reserves imposed by the fear of shame or 
religious terrors, but by habits freely contracted, 
inspired by nature and avowed by reason ? 

The people being more enlightened, and hav- 
ing resumed the right of disposing for themselves 
of their blood and their treasure, will learn by de- 
grees to regard war as the most dreadful of all ca- 
lamities, the most terrible of all crimes. The first- 
wars that will be supersceded, will be those into 
which the usurpers of sovereignty have hitherto 



*3S 

drawn their subjects for the maintenance of rights 
pretendedly hereditary. 

Nations will know, that they cannot become 
conquerors without losing their freedom ; that per- 
petual confederations are the only means of main- 
taining their independence ; that their object should 
be security, and not power. By degrees commer- 
cial prejudices will die away ; a false mercantile in- 
terest will lose the terrible power of imbruing the 
earth with blood, and of ruining nations under the 
idea of enriching them. As the people of differ- 
ent countries will at last be drawn into closer inti- 
macy, by the principles of politics and morality, as 
each, for its own advantage, will invite foreigners 
to an equal participation of the benefits which it 
may have derived either from nature or its own in- 
dustry, all the causes wdiich produce, envenom, 
and perpetuate national animosities, will one by one 
disappear, and will no more furnish to warlike in- 
sanity either fuel or pretext. 

Institutions, better combined than those pro- 
jects of perpetual peace which have occupied the 
leisure and consoled the heart of certain philoso- 
phers, will accelerate the progress of this fraterni- 
ty of nations ; and wars, like assassinations, will be 
ranked in the number of those daring attrocities, 
humiliating and lothsome to nature ; and which fix 
upon the country or the age w T hose annals are stain- 
ed with them, an indelible opprobrium. 

In speaking of the fine arts in Greece, in Italy, 
and in France, we have observed, that it is neces- 
sary to distinguish, in their productions, what re- 
ally belongs to the progress of the art, and what is 
due only to the talent of the artist. And here let 
us enquire what progress may still be expected, 
whether, in consequence of the advancement of 

u 



2^6 

osophy and the sciences, or from an additional 
store of more judicious and profound observations 
relative to the object, the effects and the means of 
these arts themselves; or lastly, from the removal 
of the prejudices that have contracted their sphere, 
and that still retain them in the shackles of autho- 
rity, from which the sciences and philosophy have 
at length freed themselves. Let us ask, whether, 
as has frequently been supposed, these means may 
be considered as exhausted ? or, if not exhausted, 
whether, bec?oise the most sublime and pathetic 
beauties have been seized ; the most happy subjects 
treated ; the most simple and striking combinations 
employed ; the most prominent and general charac- 
ters exhibited ; the most energetic passions, their 
true expressions and genuine features delineated ; 
the most commanding truths, the most brilliant 
images displayed; that therefore, the arts are con- 
demned to an eternal and monotonous imitation of 
their first models ? 

We shall perceive that this opinion is merely a 
prejudice, derived from the habit which exists a- 
mong men of letters and artists of appreciating the 
merits of men, instead of giving themselves up to 

the enjoyment to be received from their works 

The second-hand pleasure which arises from com- 
paring the productions of different ages and coun- 
tries, and from contemplating the energy and suc- 
cess of the efforts of genius, will perhaps be lost ; 
but, in the mean time, the pleasure arising from 
the productions considered in themselves, and flow- 
ing from their absolute perfection, need not be less 
lively, though the improvement of the author may 
less excite our astonishment. In proportion as ex- 
cellent productions shall multiply, every successive 
generation of men will direct its attention to those 
which are the most perfect, and the rest will insen- 



O 1 *7 

:1 into oblivion; while the more simple and 
able traits, which were seized upon by tlv 
who first entered the field of invention, will not 
less exist for our posterity, though they shall be 
found only in the latest productions. 

The progress of the sciences secures the pro- 
gress of the art of instruction, which again accele- 
rates in its turn that of the sciences ; and this reci- 
procal influence, the action of which is incessantly 
encreased, must be ranked in the number of the 

st prolific and powerful causes of the improve- 
ment of the human race. At present, a young man 
upon finishing his studies and quitting our scho 

f know more of the principles of mathem 
than Newton acquired by profound study, or disco- 
vered by the force of his genius, and may exerc 
the instrument of calculation with a readiness which 
at that period was unknown. The same observati- 
on, with certain restrictions, may be applied to all 
the sciences. In proportion as each shall advance, 
the means of compressing, within a smaller circle, 
the proofs of a greater number of truths, and ci 
cilitating their comprehension, will equally advan 
Thus, notwithstanding future degrees of progress, 
not only will men of equal genius find themselves, 
at the same period of life, upon a level with the ac- 
tual state of science, but respecting every gen 
tion, wh be acquired in a given space of t; 

by t > ngth of intellect and the same de- 

gree of attention, will necessarily in I the 

part of each science, that 

nded, v . , in a manner mon 

the knowledge necessary f 
on of every man in the common 
, and for 
Dn. 



2 3 3 

the political sciences there is a description of 
truths, which particularly in free countries (that is, 
in all countries in certain generations), can only be 
useful when generally known and avowed. Thus, 
the influence of these sciences upon the freedom 
and prosperity of nations, must, in some sort, be 
measured by the number of those truths that, in 
consequence of elementary Instruction, shall per- 
vade the general mind: and thus, as the growing 
progress of this elementary instruction is connected 
with the necessary progress of the sciences, we 
may expect a melioration in the doctrines of the 
human race which may be regarded as indefinite, 
since it can have no other limits than those of the 
two species of progress on which it depends. 

We have still two other means of general ap- 
plication to consider, and which must, influence at 
once both the improvement of the art of instructi- 
on and that of the sciences. One is a more exten- 
sive and more perfect adoption of what may be 
called technical methods ; the other, the instituti- 
on of an universal language. 

By technical methods I understand, the art of 
uniting a great number of objects in an arranged 
and systematic order, by which wc may be enabled 
to perceive at a glance their bearings and connecti- 
ons, seize in an instant their combinations, and 
form from them more readily new combinations. 

Let us develope the principles, let us examine 
the utility of this art, as yet in its infancy, and we 
shall find that, when improved and perfected, we 
might derive from it, either the advantage of pos- 
sessing within the narrow compass of a picture, 
what it would be often difficult for volumes to ex- 
plain to us so readily and so well ; or the means, 
still more valuable, of presenting isolated facts in 



^39 

a disposition and view best calculated to give us 
their general results. We shall perceive how, by- 
means of a small number of these pictures or ta- 
bles, the use of which may be easily learned, men 
who have not been able to appropriate such useful 
details and elementary knowledge as may apply to 
purposes of common life, may turn to them at 
the shortest notice ; and how elementary knowledge 
itself, in all those sciences where this knowledge is 
founded either upon a regular code of truths or a 
series of observations and experiments, may here- 
by be facilitated. 

An universal language is that which expresses 
by signs, either the direct objects, or those well- 
defined collections constituted of simple and gene- 
ral ideas, which are to be found or may be intro- 
duced equally in the understandings of all mankind; 
or lastly, the general relations of these ideas, the 
operations of the human mind, the operations pe- 
culiar to any science, and the mode of process in 
arts. Thus, such persons as shall have become 
masters of these signs, the method of combining 
and the rules for constructing them, will under- 
stand what is written in this language, and will read 
it with similar facility in the language of their own 
country, whatever it may happen to be. 

It is apparent, that this language might be em- 
yed to explain either the theory of a science or 
rules of an art ; to give an account of a new 
jriment or a new observation, the acquisition 
a scientific truth, the invention of a method, or 
discovery of a process ; and that, like algebra, 
i obligee 1 to make use of new signs, those al- 
ly known would, afford the means of rin- 

r value. 
A language like this die inconveni- 

tentific idiom, different from the v( 
U 



24-0 



nacular tongue. We have before observed, that 
the use of such an idiom necessarily divides soci- 
eties into two extremely unequal classes ; the one 
composed of men, understanding the language, 
and, therefore, in possession of the key to the sci- 
ences ; the other of those who, incapable of learn- 
ing it, find themselves reduced almost to an abso- 
lute impossibility of acquiring knowledge. On the 
contrary, the universal language we are supposing, 
might be learned, like the language of algebra, with 
the science itself ; the sign might be known at the 
same instant with the object, the idea, or the ope- 
ration which it expresses. He who, having attain- 
ed the elements of a science, should wish to prose- 
cute farther his enquiries, would find in books, not 
only truths that he could understand, by means of 
those signs, of which he already knows the value, 
but the explanation of the new signs of which he 
has need in order to ascend to higher truths. 

It might be shown that the formation of such a 
language, if confined to the expressing of simple and 
precise propositions, like those which form the sys- 
tem of a science, or the practice of an art, would 
be the reverse of chimerical ; that its execution, 
even at present, would be extremely practicable as 
to a great number of objects ; and that the chief 
obstacle that would stand in the way of extending 
it to others, would be the humiliating necessity of 
acknowledging how few precise ideas, and accu- 
rately defined notions, understood exactly in the 
same sense by every mind, w T e really possess. 

It might be shown that this language, improv- 
ing every day, acquiring incessantly greater extent, 
would be the means of giving to every object that 
comes within the reach of human intelligence, a 
or and precision that would facilitate the know- 
ledge of truth, and render error almost impossible. 



2A.1 

Then would the march of every science be as in- 
fallible as that of the mathematics, and the propo- 
sitions of every system acquire, as far as nature 
will admit, geometrical demonstration and cer- 
tainty. 

All the causes which contribute to the improve- 
ment of the human species, all the means we have 
enumerated that insure its progress, must, from 
their very nature, exercise an influence always ac- 
tive, and acquire an extent forever increasing 

The proofs of this have been exhibited, and from 
their deveiopement in the work itself they will de- 
rive additional force : accordingly we may aire 
conclude, that the perfectibility of man is indefinite. 
Meanwhile we have hitherto considered him as 
possessing only the same natural faculties, as en- 
dowed with the same organization. How much 
greater would be the certainty, how much wider 
the compass of our hopes, could we prove that these 
natural faculties themselves, that this very organiz- 
ation) are also susceptible of melioration ? And 
this is the last question we shall examine. 

The organic perfectibility or deterioration of 
the classes as the vegetable, or species of the ani- 
mal kingdom, may be regarded as one of the ge- 
neral laws of nature. 

This law extends itself to the human race ; and 
it cannot be doubted that the progress of the sana- 
tive art, that the use of more wholesome food and 
more comfortable habitations, that a mode of life 
which shall deveiope the physical powers bv exer- 
cise, v/uhout at the same time impairing then: 
excess ; in fine, that the destruction of the two 
most active causes of deterioration, penury and 
wretchedness on the one hand, and enormous 
wealth on the ether, must necessaiilv tend to pro- 
long the common duration of man's existence, and 
secure him a mere constant health and a more 



. 



stitution. It is manifest that the improve- 
it of the practice of medicine, become more 
acious in consequence of the progress of rea- 
son and ihs. social order, must in the end put a pe- 

1 to transmissible or contagious disorders 3 
well to those general maladies resulting from cli- 
;, aliments, and the of certain occupa- 

3, Nor would it be difficult to prove that this 
be extended to almost every other ma- 
, of which it is probable we shall hereafter dis-' 
sr the most remote causes. Would it even be 
ird to suppose this quality of melioration in 
human species as susceptible of an indefinite ad- 
to suppose that a period must one day 
ve when death will be nothing more than the 
:t either of extraordinary accidents, or of the 
slow and gradual decay of the vital powers ; and 
t the duration of the middle space, of the inter- 
val between the birth of man and this decay will it- 
have no assignable limit ? Certainly man will 
become immortal ; but may not the distance be- 
tween the moment in which he draws his first breath, 
the common term when, in the course of na- 
■?, without malady or accident, he finds it impos- 
e any longer to exist, be necessarily protracted ? 
we are now speaking of a progress that is capa- 
of being represented with precision, by nume- 
rical quantities or by lines, we shall embrace the 
opportunity of explaining the two meanings that. 
may be affixed to the word indefinite. 

In reality, this middle terni of life, which in 
proportion as men advance upon the ocean of futu- 
rity, we have supposed incessantly to increase, may 
receive additions cither in conformity to a law by 

ich, though approaching continually an ilium 
ble extent, it could never possibly arrive at it ; or 
a la\v by which, in the immensity of ages, it may 
cater extent than any determinate quail- 



tity whatever that may be assigned as its limit. In 
the latter case, this duration of life is indefinite in 
the strictest sense of the word, since there exist no 
bounds on this side of which it must necessarily 
stop. And in the former, it is equally indefinite to 
us ; if we cannot fix the term, it may forever ap- 
proach, but can never surpass ; particularly if, know- 
ing only that it can never stop, we are ignorant in 
which of the two senses die term indefinite is appli- 
cable to it : and this is precisely die state of the 
knowledge we have as yet acquired relative to the 
perfectibility of the species. 

Thus, in the instance we are considering, we 
are bound to believe that the mean duration of hu- 
man life wi] :r increase, unless its increase 
be prevented by the physical revolutions of the sys- 
tem ; but we cannot tell what is the bound which 
the duration of human life can never exceed ; 
cannot even tell, whether there be any circumstance 
in the laws of nature which has determined and laid 
down its limit. 

Eur may not our physical faculties, the force, 
the sagacity, the acuteness of the senses, be num- 
bered among the qualities, the individual improve- 
ment of which it will be practicable to transm 
An attention to the at breeds of do 

animals must lead us to adopt the affirmative of t! 
question, and a direct observation of the human 
species itself will be found to sti en the opi- 

nion. 

Lastly, may we not include in the same cir- 
cle the intellectual and moral faculties ? May not 
our parents, who transmit to us the advantages or 
defects of their conformation, and from whom we 
receive our features and shape, as well 
pensities to certain physical affections, ti to 

us also that part of organization up h intel- 

lect, strength of understanding, energy of soul, 



1 sensibility depend ? Is Itnotprobai 
cation, by improving these qualities, will at 
same time have an influence upon, will modify and 
improve this organization itself ? Analogy, an in 
vestigation of the human faculties, and even sorm 
facts, ap ithorize these conjectures, an: 

thereby to enlarge the boundary of our hopes. 

Such are the questions with which we shaltter- 
mim 

lirably calculated is this view of the human 

, emancipated from its chains, released alike 

from the dominion of chance, as well as from that 

of the enemies cf its progress, and advancing with 

afirm and indeyi hi the paths of truth, to ccn- 

ilng the errors^ the 

cts of 'injustice, the crimes with which the 

earth is still polluted? It is the contemplation of 

prospect that rewards him for all his efforts to 

assist the progress of reason and the establishment 

of liberty. He dares to regard these efforts as a 

cf the eternal chain of the destiny of mank.i 

persuasion he finds the true delight of 
e. the pleasure of having performed a durable 
service, which no vicissitude will ever destroy in a 
fatal operation calculated to restore the reign of pre - 
lice and slavery. This sentiment is the asylum 
) which he retires, and to which the memory of 
,:rs cannot follow him : he unites lam- 
in imagination with man restored to his rights, 
delivered from oppression, and proceeding with ra~ 
strides in the path of happiness ; he forgets his 
n misfortunes while his thoughts are thus em- 
lives no longer to adversity, calumny 
but becomes the < oociate of these 
re fortunate beings whose enviable 
a earnestly contributed to p: 












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